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Category: Student Aid

A Closer Look at Student Debt (Part 2)

On Friday, we looked at the evolution of average monthly student loan payments since the 1980s. Though debt has increased considerably during the past thirty years, it’s been pretty stable over the last decade.  Meanwhile, a major decline in interest rates has caused student loan payments to drop from a peak of $323 per month in 2000 to $268 in 2011 at the Bachelor’s degree level (in inflation-adjusted dollars). If student debt is up but the monthly payment burden is down, are students

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April 16, 2012 2 Comments

A Closer Look at Student Debt (Part 1)

A few months ago, we reported that increases in student debt in the 2000s did not keep up with tuition, owing largely to increases in student grant and bursary programs. Yet the raw amount of student debt at graduation tells only part of the story. Thinking about debt in terms of balance owing can obscure more than it reveals; it’s also worth looking at debt from the lens of monthly student loan payments. Given student loans’ fixed repayment period, monthly

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April 13, 2012 5 Comments

How to Fix the Canada Learning Bond

Chances are you’re familiar with Registered Education Savings Plans. Though they’ve been around for 40 years now, it was only with the 1998 budget’s introduction of the Canada Education Savings Grants and their 20% top-ups of RESP contributions that they got big. Nowadays, parents contribute $3.39 billion per year to RESPs, and the CESG program hands out $667.1 million per year. Of course, people pointed out at the time that the CESGs offered much more to families that could afford to

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April 12, 2012 No Comments

Tuition Fees Worldwide

Today, HESA released the annual global year in review of tuition fees and student aid for 2011, which you can read here. Put together by HESA’s network of over thirty associates around the world, myself and (mainly) Pamela Marcucci, it’s the first really global analysis of how cost-sharing is evolving around the world. We looked at what we call the “G-40”; that is, the 40 countries which collectively comprise 90% of the world’s students and 90% of the world’s scientific

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March 22, 2012 1 Comment

On Sticker Price, Net Price and Red Squares

This afternoon, Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand will present his budget, which will likely reiterate the province’s plan to increase tuition by $325 annually for five years, starting this fall. The tuition debate has occupied much provincial politics this early spring. Striking students are taking to the streets on a daily basis. In one indefensible incident, a CEGEP student may have lost an eye after police tossed a “stun grenade” in his direction. The anti-striketuition symbol, the carré rouge, abounds,

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March 20, 2012 8 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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