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Category: Student Aid

Rationalizing Regressive Subsidies

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog analysing the distributional effects of tuition reductions vs. targeted grants, and concluded that the latter was far more progressive in their impact than the former.  In response, Carleton professor Nick Falvo wrote a piece on OCUFA’s Academic Matters website saying that I was “wrong about tuition”.  Because some of his arguments are interesting – to his credit, he didn’t reach for the appalling argument that a regressive distribution of benefits is OK because the

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May 21, 2014 3 Comments

Who’s Progressive?

To the extent that finances act as a barrier to higher education, they are an obstacle to those without resources – that is, those who tend to come from lower-income backgrounds.  It is, therefore, simply common sense that if you want to relieve financial barriers, you concentrate resources among those with the fewest means. Except, it doesn’t seem to be common sense among many of those who consider themselves “progressive” in Canada.  “Progressives”, for reasons that are almost incomprehensible, prefer

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May 9, 2014 2 Comments

A Mediocre Crop of Provincial Budgets

As you all may remember, we here at HESA Towers like to do an annual round-up of how PSE and student assistance has fared in provincial budgets.  It’s been a bit difficult this year, what with Ontario taking its sweet time to table a budget, and Quebec tabling one in March, but failing to pass it before the election was called.  Since the latest betting is that Quebec won’t actually put a budget together until sometime in July (fully 21

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May 2, 2014 No Comments

Scare Tactics

So, my blog posts on Net Zero Tuition got some attention last week, not least because Margaret Wente took up the cudgels on the issue.  The reaction to it was disheartening to say the least. From ordinary students and recent graduates, the response was basically some variant of the “n of one” reaction: “I pay attention, I have debt; therefore, it is not be possible that, across the whole, non-repayable aid had doubled, or that this country spends as much

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May 1, 2014 1 Comment

Mobility Responsibilities

Saying that we should remove barriers to student mobility sounds like a motherhood issue.  But scratch a little deeper, and you’ll see that, in fact, Canadians are pretty equivocal on the concept. For starters, while everyone loves inbound mobility (come here!  It’s a great place!), there’s a pretty deep streak of protectionism in Canadian provincial governments on the issue of outbound mobility.  The sentiment of “let’s keep our kids at home” runs deep in many parts of the country.  It wasn’t until the advent

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April 28, 2014 2 Comments
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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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