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Category: Tuition

Rationalizing Regressive Subsidies

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog analysing the distributional effects of tuition reductions vs. targeted grants, and concluded that the latter was far more progressive in their impact than the former.  In response, Carleton professor Nick Falvo wrote a piece on OCUFA’s Academic Matters website saying that I was “wrong about tuition”.  Because some of his arguments are interesting – to his credit, he didn’t reach for the appalling argument that a regressive distribution of benefits is OK because the

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May 21, 2014 3 Comments

Who’s Progressive?

To the extent that finances act as a barrier to higher education, they are an obstacle to those without resources – that is, those who tend to come from lower-income backgrounds.  It is, therefore, simply common sense that if you want to relieve financial barriers, you concentrate resources among those with the fewest means. Except, it doesn’t seem to be common sense among many of those who consider themselves “progressive” in Canada.  “Progressives”, for reasons that are almost incomprehensible, prefer

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May 9, 2014 2 Comments

Why Everyone Loves International Students (Part 1)

A nice simple post today: why universities are going bananas for international students. The first figure shows undergraduate tuition fees for international students in each province.  They range from a little under $10,000 in Newfoundland, to just over $25,000 in PEI.  The national average for this period is $18,840; in Ontario it is $23,000. International Undergraduate Tuition Fees by Province, 2012, in $2013               What’s more, fees for international students have been going up

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May 7, 2014 5 Comments

Scare Tactics

So, my blog posts on Net Zero Tuition got some attention last week, not least because Margaret Wente took up the cudgels on the issue.  The reaction to it was disheartening to say the least. From ordinary students and recent graduates, the response was basically some variant of the “n of one” reaction: “I pay attention, I have debt; therefore, it is not be possible that, across the whole, non-repayable aid had doubled, or that this country spends as much

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May 1, 2014 1 Comment

Good and Bad Arguments Against Education Tax Credits

One of the things that has become clear to me in much of the commentary about the Net Zero Tuition material last week was that a surprising number of people really don’t understand how tax credits work, or what their distributive impact is.  Worth a review, then. Bad Argument: Poor students don’t benefit from tax credits.  It is quite true that students whose income is not high enough to be taxable cannot use the credits themselves in the current tax year

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April 30, 2014 1 Comment

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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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