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Tag: Student Debt

Education at a Glance 2022

It’s that day of the year, when OECD releases its annual report on education across the world’s richest countries, known as Education at a Glance.  I have written about these releases many times before, and in truth a lot of the data tells the same story, year after year: Canada has very high attainment rates, mainly due to the way we choose to present our data on college students.  We also spend more than most countries on post-secondary education if

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October 5, 2022 No Comments

Cross-National Student Loan Repayment Comparisons

As I mentioned yesterday,  there was a big change in US student loan policy last week, namely with respect to income-based repayment.  As I see it, the new rules make it one of the least onerous places in the world in which to repay student loans, by some standards.  But before I substantiate this claim, I need to discuss how student loan repayments work around the world. Trying to compare loan burdens across national borders can be tricky because the

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August 31, 2022 1 Comment

US Debt Cancellation – What Just Happened?

So, the big news last week in world higher education was the Biden administration finally cancelling some student debt and – in theory, who knows? – resuming student loan repayments in December of this year (they were suspended in the Spring of 2020 in the chaos of early COVID.) Let’s break down Wednesday’s announcement. The government forgave the following debt: Up to $20,000 of Department of Education debt for borrowers who apply and meet the following three criteria: have outstanding

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August 30, 2022 No Comments

America’s Student Debt Cancellation Morass

It has now been something on the order of 26 months since anyone in the United States has been required to make payments their student loans.  As in Canada, these payments were suspended at the outset of the pandemic.  But whereas in Canada repayments re-started after about six months (Oct 1, 2020), in the United States they have yet to do so.  Understanding why gets us all a little closer to understanding the disfunction that is the American Higher Education

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May 26, 2022 2 Comments

Inflation

One of the less-anticipated outcomes of the COVID pandemic is the return of inflation at levels not seen in nearly thirty years.  It is not yet clear if this inflation is something transitory, or something more long-term.  The supply-chain snarls of mid-2021 have been followed by inflationary spikes due to rising oil prices and now – with the invasion of Ukraine – major spikes in food prices world-wide.  In theory, each of these things is a one-off.  But as wages

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March 24, 2022 2 Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

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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