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Category: Students

Yoga

Many of you may have already seen this piece from the Guardian last week entitled “My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me”.  The details are obviously England-specific, but it’s basically a riff on that oft-heard complaint: if the cost of education gets too high, and students start thinking of themselves as – shock, horror – consumers, then higher education is definitely dead, bring back the dark ages, etc., etc. Now, without denying that there are probably some students who

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January 13, 2016 12 Comments

Kids These Days

I’ve had a few people ask me in recently: “what’s going on with students these days?”  Or words to that effect.  Although they don’t say so explicitly – they assume I know what they mean – what they are talking about is (in no particular order): that Atlantic article from a couple of months ago about intellectually-coddled students, the imbroglio at Yale, and the highly amusing Yogapocalyspe at the University of Ottawa. The line people seem to have these days

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November 27, 2015 3 Comments

Quick Takes on Student Aid Around the World

Three quick hits: Islamic Student Loans in the UK.  Loans and Muslim students are always a hot topic.  That’s partly because there are a number of Muslim students who don’t like the idea of loans with interest (not very many, but enough to be noticeable), and partly because certain soi-disant “progressive” white kids like to use Muslims’ reticence about interest as an excuse to argue that loans are effectively racist, and therefore should all be replaced by grants (yes, really). 

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November 20, 2015 No Comments

Expected Parental Contributions

Just a quick note: next week, I’ll be on that all-too-common transportation route, Toronto-Milwaukee-Shanghai, en route to attend (and deliver a paper at) the 6th International Conference on World-Class Universities, and the blog will be on hiatus while I’m away. Anyways, to business. Everyone knows that for dependent students – that is, students less than four years out of secondary school, or who have not spent two consecutive years in the labour market full-time – the amount of student assistance

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October 23, 2015 3 Comments

Youth Unemployment: Some Perspective, Please

Every once in awhile, you’ll hear folks talking about the scourge of youth unemployment.  If you’re really lucky, you’ll hear them describe it as a “crisis”.  But how bad is youth unemployment, really? Well, the quick answer is that you can’t really separate youth unemployment from general unemployment.  As Figure 1  shows, one is a function of the other. Figure 1: Youth Unemployment Rates, 15 and Over vs. 15-24 Age Groups, Canada, 1976-2015 (Source: CANSIM 282-001.  Seasonlly-Adjusted)      

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September 24, 2015 4 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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