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Category: Student Aid

Follies of the Rich and Philanthropic

One of the irritating things about modern capitalism is the way media and the establishment see the need to treat rich people’s ideas seriously, even if the subject at hand is something they know literally nothing about. Take, for instance, a recent story in Businessweek about Chamath Palihapitiya. A former Facebook insider, he’s now a venture capitalist with an eye for social entrepreneurship. The story has him creating a company called Brilliant, a “global online talent registry” that plans to identify

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August 27, 2012 No Comments

Worst. Student Aid Data Analysis. Ever.

While flipping through Twitter the other day, I saw what I am pretty sure is the weakest analysis of student aid data in history. I won’t prejudice readers by telling you whose analysis it was (see if you can guess). Anyways, the analysis went like this: “60% of student loan borrowers are women! Tuition fees have a gendered impact!” Honestly, that’s what it said. “Gosh,” I wondered. “Could the fact that 60% of borrowers are women have anything to do

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August 7, 2012 No Comments

The New York Times Swings and Misses

Sure signs of spring: baseball is back (and so is Vlad!), Ottawa is full of tulips, Quebec students are demonstrating in the buff and newspaper editors are turning their attention to student debt. Exhibit A: the Globe’s spread on debt last Saturday (full disclosure: HESA supplied some of the data the Globe published). Exhibit B: the cover of Sunday’s New York Times – “A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College.” Now, geeky wonks that we are, our first

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May 17, 2012 No Comments

Learning From Other Policy Areas: Housing

Sometimes, I think we spend too much time trying to learn from policy in other countries and not enough time learning from related policy areas in our own country. Take housing, for instance – probably higher education’s closest relative in policy terms. Choosing a home, like choosing an undergraduate degree, is a major decision with enormous financial implications, but both can be foreseen many years in advance, allowing people to plan for the purchase. Shelter and education are both considered

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May 16, 2012 1 Comment

A Closer Look at Student Debt (Postscript)

While the debt burden current students and recent graduates face may not be as difficult as aggregate student debt levels might suggest, there’s one final point worth making about student debt in Canada. As we reported, student debt levels in the 2000s increased somewhat, but not as much as you might have thought. Notably, university debt didn’t keep pace with increases in tuition, likely owing to significant federal and provincial investments in student grant programs. Yet averages tend to obscure

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April 20, 2012 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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