The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Student Aid

The South Korean Student Aid Miracle

Last week, we did a piece on Canadian student financial assistance over the years.  Today, I want to jump across the Pacific to South Korea, because that country’s student aid system undergone some incredible policy shifts over the past 15 years. I truly think South Korean student aid policy might be one of the biggest stories in higher education finance anywhere in the world in the past decade, and it has, hitherto gone completely unnoticed by most in the rest

Read More »
January 31, 2022 No Comments

A Long-Term View of Student Financial Aid in Canada

Over Xmas, someone asked me on Twitter whether student loans were replacing direct government support as a main source of public assistance.  I answered, no, direct government support either from the feds (mainly through research and infrastructure) or the provinces (operating grants), are worth about five times more that the annual value of student loans.  To wit, Figure 1. Figure 1: Annual Student Loan Disbursements vs. Total Government Transfers to Post-Secondary Institutions, Canada, 1989-90 to 2019-20, in constant $2019 Millions

Read More »
January 26, 2022 1 Comment

Experimental Evidence on Student Assistance

One of the things I am proudest of in my career is the role I played – almost 20 years ago when I was at the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation – in trying to start a tradition of evidence-based research in Canadian higher education.  And by evidence-based, I don’t just mean creating better statistical bases to describe systemic inputs and outputs, I mean actual experimental evidence regarding how certain treatments/policies work. For those of you not up on the concept

Read More »
November 9, 2021 2 Comments

Inter-provincial Differences in Borrowing and Debt

I recently published some time series data on student debt in Canada, to wit: Figure 1: Average Student Debt at Graduation, Various Sources in constant $2021, Canada, 1982-2021 *indicates data from the Canada University Consortium; otherwise data is from the National Graduates’ Survey As is often the case, national figures obscure provincial differences. So today I wanted to put some data out there to provide those nuanced regional figures. Let’s start with the issue of annual borrowing.  In Figures 2

Read More »
October 4, 2021 1 Comment

Interpreting the Manifesto Commitments

Morning all.  Today’s the day where I try to sum up and compare what the various parties are promising in different areas and what that likely means for the sector.  For greater detail on individual party platforms for PSE, you may wish to consult the previous analyses: Conservative, NDP, Liberal and Green. Let’s start with the issue of transfers to provinces.  In previous years, but particularly in the two decades following the major cutbacks embedded in the Liberal government’s 1995

Read More »
September 16, 2021 No Comments
Load More

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...