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Category: Tuition

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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April 18, 2012 4 Comments

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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April 11, 2012 1 Comment

A Moment of Clarity in Quebec

Recently, I heard something from Quebec students which I think was a bit of a breakthrough. Outside Quebec, the discourse of student tuition protests tends to be of the “gimme, gimme, gimme” variety: students should pay less, and government (or “the rich,” or “corporations,” or whatever) should pay more. They’re arguing for a straight resource transfer, regardless of how regressive it is. But last week in Quebec, students started singing a slightly different tune. Pointing to expensive new capital investments

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April 2, 2012 1 Comment

Tuition Fees Worldwide

Today, HESA released the annual global year in review of tuition fees and student aid for 2011, which you can read here. Put together by HESA’s network of over thirty associates around the world, myself and (mainly) Pamela Marcucci, it’s the first really global analysis of how cost-sharing is evolving around the world. We looked at what we call the “G-40”; that is, the 40 countries which collectively comprise 90% of the world’s students and 90% of the world’s scientific

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March 22, 2012 1 Comment

On Sticker Price, Net Price and Red Squares

This afternoon, Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand will present his budget, which will likely reiterate the province’s plan to increase tuition by $325 annually for five years, starting this fall. The tuition debate has occupied much provincial politics this early spring. Striking students are taking to the streets on a daily basis. In one indefensible incident, a CEGEP student may have lost an eye after police tossed a “stun grenade” in his direction. The anti-striketuition symbol, the carré rouge, abounds,

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March 20, 2012 8 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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