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Category: Student Aid

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

The Debt-Free Graduate Argument

No, I’m not talking about Murray Baker’s long-running franchise. I’m talking about the argument that having indebted graduates is a drag on the economy. It goes like this: indebted graduates consume less than debt-free graduates because they are repaying their loans. If they had fewer loans, they’d spend more money, with inevitable multiplier effects on the economy. Hence less student debt = more economic growth. (For an example of this thinking, see here). While this certainly sounds attractive, it ignores something important:

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November 20, 2012 1 Comment

The Tools to Plan

Governments are really keen on planning as a way to improve access to education. “If only people would plan more,” goes the refrain, “people would be able to explore more options, make better financial decisions, etc., etc.” True as far as it goes; so why are governments themselves the biggest culprits in impeding good financial planning? Say you’re a student in grade 12 deciding where to go to school next year. You’d probably like to know how your choice of

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November 14, 2012 No Comments

Henry David Thoreau on Need Assessment

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. Canada’s system of student aid need assessment is much too complicated. Not only do we have a ludicrous number of different tax rates, but we have all sorts of weird little measures to engineer micro-equity between students. The

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November 13, 2012 1 Comment

Student Aid Tax Rates

Anyone who thinks taxation is overly complicated and onerous in this country needs to spend a day or two in the shoes of a student. That’s because our tax system has absolutely nothing on our student aid assessment system. Student aid in Canada is distributed based on something called “assessed need”, which is defined as “assessed costs” minus “assessed resources” (not real costs or real resources, because those are subjective). Essentially, government has to ask students about their resources and

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November 12, 2012 1 Comment
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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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