Category: Tuition

Stalemate

A few of you have asked why we haven’t been writing about Quebec lately. Frankly, what’s the point? This ceased long ago to be about education. It’s completely mystifying how this has gone on as long as it has. As a recent CROP poll shows, two-thirds of the province backs the premier on tuition fees, half back his remarkably illiberal Loi 78 (and even larger majorities back most of the specific measures). And yet the government still can’t get traction. It

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Better Thinking about Access and Tuition

Hey, have you heard about what’s going on in Quebec and Ontario? Turns out one province is way ahead of the other in terms of university participation rates. And in terms of attainment rates among 25-34 year olds. Also, it turns out one province has tuition almost three times higher than the other. And higher rates of indebtedness. And, among those who borrow, much higher levels of indebtedness at graduation (almost 60 percent higher, in fact). The thing is, the

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What Students Pay For (II)

As we saw yesterday, the various new digital learning providers face a challenge of competing with traditional providers which have advantages in terms of providing students with i) fuller student experiences, ii) better-known brands and iii) widely-accepted credentials. So what are they doing to try to win this competition? We can more or less dispense with student experience. Most new providers essentially punt on this; there’s virtually no effort among most to try to provide value in this area. That

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What Students Pay For (I)

Anyone who seriously believes in the whole “Great Disruption” meme has to be able to make the case that technologically-driven change of the kinds currently on offer can actually offer an improved value proposition to higher education consumers. No one, to date, has convincingly done so. Let’s think about this for a minute: what is it students are actually buying when they enrol in a higher education institution? Though the specific combinations will differ from one student to another, all

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How Jean Charest Could Learn to Stop Worrying and Love a Tuition Rollback

If you’re Jean Charest, you’re probably starting to get antsy about the student strike jeopardizing the winter semester. But there’s actually a pretty simple way that the Quebec government could solve the impasse. A few weeks ago, we explained how what universities charge (sticker price) is different from what students pay (net tuition), due to the multi-headed loan-and-bursary monster known as student aid. But loans and bursaries aren’t the only way to offset tuition – there are also billions of

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