Category: Tuition

Over the past two days, I’ve been explaining how Canada spends as much on non-repayable aid as its PSE institutions collect in tuition fees for domestic students – meaning, in net terms, that Canadian students pay zero tuition.  Today I want to explore the implications of this. Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean: it doesn’t mean that many people are going to school for free.  All this funding is pretty lumpy. Many Quebecers and Newfoundlanders are receiving significantly more money

I’ve long believed that post-secondary education should be free for bright, poor kids.  And although there’s room for differences over what constitutes “poor” and “bright” (I’ve got a strict-ish definition of the former, less so the latter), it seems to me that this is a sentiment with which most people agree. But here’s the thing: in actual fact, there are an awful lot of bright poor kids already going to university for free, and nobody seems to notice.  The problem