Category: Tuition

Speak of the Devil

Yesterday was one of those days when I completely lucked out.  There I was, having just published a piece on possible scenarios on what the Ontario government might do in post-secondary education, when suddenly various news outlets began reporting that a new tuition framework was due to be announced later this week.  And it was a doozy: according to the report, the Conservative government was planning on reducing tuition in all regulated programs (ie. excluding international students and the graduate and

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How Not to Argue About Free Tuition (New Zealand Edition)

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about how Canada needs better data to improve understanding of what various types of intervention – like Alberta’s tuition freeze or Targeted Free Tuition in Ontario and New Brunswick –do in terms of access.  But data is not enough: it’s a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.  An example from our friends down in New Zealand can perhaps show why. We are coming up on the first anniversary of the implementation of free first-year

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France’s New International Education Strategy

On Monday, Campus France (which is roughly equivalent to Canada’s CBIE, if CBIE were an arms-length government agency) published its new Stratégie d’attractivité pour les étudiants internationaux.  It’s an intriguing document for a couple ofreasons so I thought I would talk a bit about it today. It starts off run-of-the-mill, with some gee-whiz stats about the growth of the international student market.  Then, on page 6, we get to the heart of the matter.  The page is titled “La France, 4ieme pays

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Re-litigating New Brunswick’s Tax Credits

Note: A version of this post appeared in the Telegraph-Journal (paywall applies) To Fredericton, where the new Conservative Government had its Throne Speech on Tuesday.  The key line for post-secondary education (which, for the most part, was ignored) was this one:  Your government will undertake an evidence-based review of existing programs supporting post-secondary education and compare and contrast their effectiveness with the canceled broad-based tax credits.  (nb. the tax credits were cut to create a Targeted Free Tuition program, described here among other

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“Innovative” Funding Mechanisms

Adapted from a talk delivered yesterday at the 14th FICCI Higher Education Summit in New Delhi, India. If you spend any time talking higher education policy in developing countries, the talk turns pretty quickly to the subject of “innovative methods of financing”. It’s easy to see why: money is always short, quality higher education costs a lot, and so these systems are always terribly squeezed.  Anyone holding out hope for “innovations” always gets a ready audience. The problem is that actual innovations

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