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Category: Student Aid

Why is Student Debt Not Increasing?

Yesterday, we discussed why student debt burdens were falling.  One of the key ingredients in that recipe was that student debt had remained stable, or even fallen, over the last decade or so.  This is a puzzling piece for many because it seems counterintuitive.  So what’s going on? Well, costs are increasing, but only modestly so: since 2000, tuition has only been rising about 2% above inflation.  There’s been no real change in the percentage of students living away from

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January 29, 2014 5 Comments

Karl Marx Talks Tuition with a Young Progressive Thing

Karl Marx: Jenny… Jenny… there’s a kid at the door… Jenny?  Oh all right, I’ll get it myself <opens door> Young Progressive Thing: Hi there, Mr. Marx!  I’m an idealistic Young Progressive Thing.  Want to sign this petition from the Canadian Federation of Students and the Carré Rouge types to make tuition free? KM: (stares bemusedly).  Why on earth would I want to do that? YPT: (startled). Well, it’s about helping the poor.  The workers.  You’re into that, aren’t you,

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January 21, 2014 1 Comment

Canada’s Income-Contingent Loan System

I see that yet another group has called for Canada to have an income-contingent Loan Program to help students fund their higher education studies.  Great idea.  In fact, it’s so great that the country adopted an income-contingent system five years ago. It’s just that nobody noticed. Many people think that income-contingency requires that loan repayments be a fixed percentage of individual income, or that loan recovery be handled through the tax system.  While it’s true that some of the world’s

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January 20, 2014 3 Comments

Things We Take for Granted in Student Assistance

Last week, I had the pleasure of talking with federal and provincial student aid leaders, in Toronto, about global developments in student assistance.  I told them there were a lot of interesting developments in different places, but they weren’t necessarily applicable to Canada because of different national contexts. Context matters in student assistance – not everything we have here is available to student aid types elsewhere.  Here, for instance, are just a few of the things we take for granted

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December 3, 2013 No Comments

Parents, Transfers, and Debt

A few weeks ago, CBC ran a story about parents taking on debt so that their kids didn’t have to.  It’s a story worth parsing carefully, because it’s a great example of how economically irrational people can be when it comes to debt. One family in this story recounts shelling out $200,000 for their three kids to go to university.  They even went into debt themselves to do it.  But they wanted to do this, apparently, because they wanted their

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October 31, 2013 No 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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