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Tag: Student Debt

Bad Coverage

A clutch of recent media stories about higher education are kind of irritating me.  Specifically, it’s the media credulity on display which is so disheartening. One major source of irritation has to do with stories which get written when a professor is suspended or dismissed. We’ve had two of these recently, one in Nova Scotia and one in BC. The one in Nova Scotia concerned Psychology professor (what the hell is it with Canadian psychology profs, anyway?)  Rick Mehta, who

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October 4, 2018 No Comments

Canada’s Affordability Success Story

Canadians are regularly bombarded with stories about “rising tuition” and “ever-mounting student debt”, the implication always being that the middle-class is being priced out of higher education, access to education is being threatened, etc.  If these stories were true, it would indeed be worrying.  The problem is, they are mostly nonsense and fuelled by ignorance of just how much Canada’s system of student assistance has grown and changed over the past couple of decades. As figure 1 shows, tuition has

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August 29, 2018 1 Comment

Student Debt Not Increasing Whatsoever (Shocker)

Hi all.  How’s the summer working out so far? I promised I would be back with a blog just as soon as the folks at the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium (CUSC) published their triennial survey of graduating students, which is the most regular and arguably the best source of information we have on student debt.  Which they did on June 27, so here I am. (Why is CUSC the best source?  Well, the feds can’t publish such data because CSLP

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June 28, 2018 4 Comments

Why Student Debt Won’t Fall

[the_ad id=”12740″] Since 2011, the amount of grant aid available to students has increased enormously in Canada.  Partly that’s due to the 2016 Federal, Ontario and New Brunswick budgets, which shifted a whole whack of tax credits to grants, as well a more long-term shift towards grants and away from loans in both Ontario and Quebec as well as, more recently, Prince Edward Island as well.  The shift isn’t universal of course – in the other 7 provincial programs loan/grant

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June 19, 2018 No Comments

Two Ways of Thinking About Student Aid and Equity

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Take two students.  One of them comes from a poor family and needs student aid, the other, by dint of having wealthier parents, is either ineligible for aid, or can manage somehow to get through school without it.  One therefore finishes school with debt and the other does not.  Because the debt carries interest, the poor student pays “more” than the better-off student.  And because the poorer student will start their career

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June 11, 2018 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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