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Category: Student Aid

Islamic Student Loans

READER’S NOTE: HESA does not have connections to any organizations that offer interest-free loans.    As-salaam Alaikum. Every once in awhile, someone in the student movement hears tell of interest in Islam being prohibited, thinks about student loans for a microsecond, and then comes up with the idea that student loans are “unislamic” and, hence, culturally inappropriate.  This, in the past, has led some in Canada to claim that the whole student aid system needs to be revised and made more

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December 12, 2012 14 Comments

Manageable Debt, Part 2

Yesterday, we looked at the principles underlying the discussion on manageable student debt; today we examine how Canadian governments try to help students manage debt, and whether or not their efforts are as efficient as they could be. Manageable debt loads are a function of three things: total debt, interest rates, and student income.  The last of these three is only vaguely susceptible to government control, but governments can control program interest rates and total debt loads through direct subsidies. 

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December 11, 2012 No Comments

Manageable Debt

One of the big questions in student loans these days concerns “manageable debt”.  How much debt is manageable, exactly?  And how do we best help borrowers whose debt is unmanageable? As nearly everyone agrees, manageable debt is a flexible concept. For someone with no income, pretty much any amount of debt is unmanageable.  As income rises, however, an increasing amount of debt can be serviced.   Interest rates and repayment terms matter too, of course;  any established debt-to-income ratio is a

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December 10, 2012 No Comments

Why We Should Worry About Student Aid (2)

As I said yesterday, need-based student aid in Canada is being eroded. We’re less likely than we used to be to spend education dollars on poorer students, and more likely to dish it out to kids from the middle-class (or higher). A couple of student groups – notably OUSA have valiantly tried to push back a bit. But when push comes to shove, they have a hard time opposing tax credits because their members all benefit. There is one group, though, which you

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November 27, 2012 No Comments

Why We Should Worry About Student Aid (1)

There is a vast, unannounced conspiracy in this country to gut need-based aid in favour of aid which is universal (i.e., non-need-based). Arguably, it’s been going on since about 1996, when Paul Martin threw a few bucks students’ way by raising the monthly tax credit for students in full-time studies from $80/month to $100/month. While need-based aid expenditures have gone up by a few hundred million since then – mostly due to the introduction of Millennium Scholarships in 1999-2000 –

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November 26, 2012 1 Comment

One Thought to Start Your Day

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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