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Tag: Student Debt

The US Student Debt Cancellation Debate

If you follow US policy debates at all, you will probably over the last couple of years have noticed that the idea of student debt cancellation has become a totem of the progressive left.  With the election of Joe Biden two weeks ago (and again this week, after several recounts) this issue is coming centre-stage, with some kind of executive order on the matter being seen potentially as an “early win” for the new administration.  Below, I answer some of

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November 19, 2020 No Comments

New Student Debt Data

Over the summer, Statistics Canada did a data dump on student debt from the 2015 National Graduate Survey.  I haven’t really had a chance to dive into it until now, but here’s a quick round-up. Let’s start with the proportion of students who are borrowing (see Figure 1).  Rates of borrowing vary quite a bit by level of education: lowest at the doctoral level and highest in professional programs such as law and medicine.  Neither is surprising: professional programs have

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November 5, 2020 No Comments

New Student Aid Data

Canada is – to put it mildly – flat-out terrible at releasing student aid data.  How many loans are issued?  How many grants?  In what amounts?  These rather basic facts are unknowable from the public record.  The government of Canada publishes statistics on the Canada Student Loans Program, which is good except that a) that’s only about 40% of the system and b) the most recent publication is from – and I wish I were kidding about this – 2016-17. 

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September 2, 2020 1 Comment

Designing Student Aid Programs from Scratch (3)

Welcome back to this little series.  On Monday and Tuesday we looked at loans – how to pay for them and how to design repayment systems.  Today, I want to introduce grants into the mix (to be clear, I’m only talking about grants where need is the primary criterion – there’s a whole other set of policy considerations about merit-based aid, which I’m going to leave to one side during this discussion). Theoretically, the grants vs. loans debate is one of the most important

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December 4, 2019 1 Comment

A New (ish) Argument About Debt and Tuition

As I am starting to sketch out the bones of my next book, (semi-serious working title: How Tuition Fees Will Save the World), I am collecting arguments about the nature and desirability of private contributions to higher education.  Most of the interesting stuff on that front right now is coming from the United States, which is of course sui generis as higher education systems go and so not necessarily applicable elsewhere, but its nonetheless vital to understand. Maybe the most

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June 11, 2019 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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