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Tag: Student Debt

How ICRs can Become Graduate Taxes: The Case of England

As noted yesterday, graduate taxes and income-contingent loans have many similar features.  They both defer payments until after graduation, and they are usually payable as a percentage of marginal income above a given threshold.  In England right now, the payment scheme on ICR loans is that students pay 9% of whatever income they earn over £21,000 (roughly C$38,000).  The difference between the two is that with a loan you have a set amount to pay, and when it’s paid you’re

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March 18, 2014 2 Comments

Oregon’s “Pay It Forward” Scheme and the ICR vs. Graduate Tax Problem

You may have heard some rumblings from south of the border over the past few months with respect to a program called Pay It Forward (PIF).  The brainchild of a student group called Students for Educational Debt Reform, this idea was picked up by the Oregon assembly last summer; within a few months, over a dozen state governments were examining similar draft legislation. The basics of the program are these: instead of paying tuition, students agree to pay a percentage

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March 17, 2014 1 Comment

New Student Debt Numbers

So, the more stat-minded among you may have noted the release, this past Tuesday, of Statistics Canada’s 2012 Survey of Financial Security (SFS).  Though the main talking points were largely about mortgage debt, it also contained some interesting statistics on student debt. Now, remember that these are figures on outstanding student debt.  Some of it will be in repayment (i.e. held by graduates now in the labour force), and some of it will not (i.e. held by current students).  The way to

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February 27, 2014 No Comments

Why is Student Debt Not Increasing?

Yesterday, we discussed why student debt burdens were falling.  One of the key ingredients in that recipe was that student debt had remained stable, or even fallen, over the last decade or so.  This is a puzzling piece for many because it seems counterintuitive.  So what’s going on? Well, costs are increasing, but only modestly so: since 2000, tuition has only been rising about 2% above inflation.  There’s been no real change in the percentage of students living away from

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January 29, 2014 5 Comments

Why Student Debt Burden is Falling Like a Stone

Everyone talks about “rising student debt burdens” as if they are real.  But they’re not.  In fact, the burden of carrying a student loan has fallen significantly over the past decade. Student loan burden is best measured by looking at the percentage of monthly after-tax income that it takes to service a loan each month.  This figure will therefore be affected by four different factors, namely: the size of student loan debt, interest rates, post-graduation income, and taxes.  Here’s what’s happened

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January 28, 2014 1 Comment

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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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