As Canadians, we have a tendency to pay an excess amount of attention to developments in the US.  For instance, people are already asking whether the Obama free community college model would work in Canada.  But this is actually two questions.  The first is whether or not someone could make community college free; the second question is whether that someone could be the federal government?

Let’s take the second question first: could the federal government be the ones to do this in Canada?  The answer, pretty clearly, is: no, they couldn’t.  Formally, the Canadian and American constitutions look pretty similar in the way education is clearly a provincial/state responsibility.  But the US has evolved a couple of ways by which the federal government can enter the education system.  The first is by spending big on student aid, and then imposing conditions on the receipt of such aid.  The second is by offering states conditional matched funding to get them to do things.

Could Canada do the same?  Not really.  First of all, the ratio of provincial to federal spending, even including student aid, is nowhere near enough for the feds to get a foot in the door on most policy matters.  Second, the Americans are much more comfortable with notions of asymmetric federalism than we are.  Obama isn’t expecting all states to participate; in Canada, we tend to view these things as all-or-nothing: either everyone is in (or has been paid off via a special deal), or no one is.

Complicating things further is that different provinces and states charge different amounts of tuition.  In the US, Obama has made a small nod to this by saying that states with already low tuition won’t be required to chip in as much – and states are ok with that kind of language.  In Canada, it would be an utter nightmare.  And it’s just not differences in tuition (fees in Ontario are twice what they are in are Newfoundland) or participation rates (college part rates in Ontario are three times what they are in New Brunswick) that make it tough to determine the right amount of compensation.  Quebec already has free college – how on earth could it be compensated under a free community college plan?  You’d almost have to go to a whacking huge lump sum, and try handing over it as a conditional transfer; but since we’ve never had conditional transfers in education, this seems like an unlikely pass.

That still leaves the question of whether individual provinces might take this route.  It’s obviously possible (see: Quebec); in my experience, however, provinces get spooked by talk of “free”.  During my time as a consultant, I’ve suggested the free college idea to two provinces (and no, I’m not telling you which ones), and both times the idea was rejected out-of-hand.

Only one premier has gone on the record on this idea, thus far: Kathleen Wynne.  According to Metro:

She said she is worried this model would actually limit access to post-secondary institutions because “there would be a limited subsidy that would be available and that’s not something I want to do. What I want to do is increase access and I want everyone who’s qualified is to be able to access a college or university or a skilled trade.”

<headdesk>

What utter gibberish.  The most coherent spin you can put on her statement is that she prefers the present policy of giving a crapload of money to upper-middle-class kids in universities, rather than shift the spending-focus to lower-income kids in college.  Sad, but cynical and true.