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Tag: Student Debt

Manageable Debt, Part 2

Yesterday, we looked at the principles underlying the discussion on manageable student debt; today we examine how Canadian governments try to help students manage debt, and whether or not their efforts are as efficient as they could be. Manageable debt loads are a function of three things: total debt, interest rates, and student income.  The last of these three is only vaguely susceptible to government control, but governments can control program interest rates and total debt loads through direct subsidies. 

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December 11, 2012 No Comments

Manageable Debt

One of the big questions in student loans these days concerns “manageable debt”.  How much debt is manageable, exactly?  And how do we best help borrowers whose debt is unmanageable? As nearly everyone agrees, manageable debt is a flexible concept. For someone with no income, pretty much any amount of debt is unmanageable.  As income rises, however, an increasing amount of debt can be serviced.   Interest rates and repayment terms matter too, of course;  any established debt-to-income ratio is a

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December 10, 2012 No Comments

The Debt-Free Graduate Argument

No, I’m not talking about Murray Baker’s long-running franchise. I’m talking about the argument that having indebted graduates is a drag on the economy. It goes like this: indebted graduates consume less than debt-free graduates because they are repaying their loans. If they had fewer loans, they’d spend more money, with inevitable multiplier effects on the economy. Hence less student debt = more economic growth. (For an example of this thinking, see here). While this certainly sounds attractive, it ignores something important:

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November 20, 2012 1 Comment

Does Debt Affect Career Choice?

A lot of hypotheses about the negative effects of student debt (some of which I was responsible for, 15 or so years ago), have, over time, been shown to be wrong. The one about debt being a serious deterrent to access, for instance (at least at current levels of borrowing); or the one about how increased student debt delays family formation. But what about the hypothesis that higher levels of student debt might leading students to take “jobs that pay

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May 22, 2012 1 Comment

The New York Times Swings and Misses

Sure signs of spring: baseball is back (and so is Vlad!), Ottawa is full of tulips, Quebec students are demonstrating in the buff and newspaper editors are turning their attention to student debt. Exhibit A: the Globe’s spread on debt last Saturday (full disclosure: HESA supplied some of the data the Globe published). Exhibit B: the cover of Sunday’s New York Times – “A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College.” Now, geeky wonks that we are, our first

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May 17, 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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