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Category: Tuition

Countries with Free Tuition

One of the things that various anti-tuition types like to point to in debates is the number of countries which have “free tuition” (by which they mean the user pays nothing and the state pays everything). If these dozens of countries can do it, the argument goes, why can’t we? There are limits to this line of argument, as, on its own, it’s a variant of “my friends are jumping off a bridge, and I’d like to join them.” But perhaps these

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September 25, 2012 1 Comment

The Cost of PSE, 2030

One type of story which always makes the back-to-school news is the “what will PSE cost in 2020/2025/whatever” (the choice of year is usually 18 years in the future) story, which normally emanates from a press release from a financial institution trying to sell savings products of some kind. The problem with most of these estimates is that they are based on straight-line extrapolations of recent trends. Thus, all the stories from the late nineties assumed that 8% increases in

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September 20, 2012 No Comments

Student Aid through the Looking Glass

On the heels of Statistics Canada’s annual overview of tuition fee increases across the country (which unfortunately fails to take into account Pauline Marois’s imminen cancellation of the $254 tuition hike in Quebec), it’s worth considering something that everyone involved in student aid policy needs to come to grips with: that there is a significant fraction of student aid recipients who are better off when tuition rises, and worse off when tuition falls. I’m not making this up. Here’s how it happens:

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September 13, 2012 1 Comment

Worst Back-to-School Article, 2012 Edition

Carol Goar from the Toronto Star, take a bow. Your article “Ontario students paying more but getting less” wins my vote as the most facile, ill-informed article of la rentrée. The article contains two basic screw-ups which merit the award. First, the “paying more” bit. Her contention is that the average tuition fee has risen $4182 since when Mike Harris was elected. The figure is correct, but unadjusted for inflation. When you actually compare apples to apples – as any first-year econ

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September 10, 2012 1 Comment

Back to (Red) Square One

Alex Usher and Joseph Berger The Parti Québécois’ Tuesday night victory will have major effects on higher education in Quebec, but there are implications right across the country, too. Here are a few of them. Inside Quebec, things are back to square one. The PQ has already told student leaders it’s cancelling the increases to tuition; recent improvements to student aid are unlikely to stick, since they were largely going to be funded via tuition revenue – but the PQ hasn’t made any

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September 7, 2012 No 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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