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Category: Student Aid

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

Shifting Away from Need-Based Aid in Alberta

Last month, the Government of Alberta announced some fairly radical changes to its student financial aid program, to wit: – The province will no longer count student income, RRSPs and, crucially, parental income in the calculation of revenue. Instead, all students will be expected to make a $1,500 contribution to their education, except for single parents, who will be exempt. – The province is introducing completion grants, as the Herald explains: “$1,000 for a technical certificate, $1,500 for a diploma

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March 2, 2012 No Comments

You Couldn’t Make It Up

This email is G-rated, so I can’t use the full range of sexual/scatological imagery needed to describe my true feelings about the Ontario government’s Tuition Rebate announcement last week. I’ll keep it to: I told you so. To recap, the Ontario Liberals made a not-particularly sensible election promise to give a 30% rebate tuition to full-time dependent students. But at least it involved giving some new money to low-income students, even if it came at the cost of providing a

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January 9, 2012 9 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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