One of the things about student aid that makes it such great fun as a policy area is that it’s as much about framing as it is about actual policy. For instance, which of the following two policies would you like to have? a) A policy where students are asked to bear a huge amount of debt – over $100,000 in some cases for an undergraduate degree – over 25 years, and where three-quarters of students will never repay
In 2012, the UK government allowed tuition in English universities to rise from a little over £3,300 to ($5,500) to about £9,000 ($15,300) in a single year. Well, technically, they de-regulated tuition up to a maximum of £9,000, but since charging less than the maximum would obviously imply that programs weren’t top-quality, pretty much everyone went to the maximum immediately. Actual average tuition jumped to about £8,600 ($14,620). So, of course, we’ve all been wondering what the effects of this would be.
There’s a trope out there that goes something like this: “Loans are unfair because interest on the loans means that needy students pay more in total to go to school than students who don’t need a loan“. If it were true, this would indeed be problematic. But the thing is, for the most part, it’s not. Let’s follow two hypothetical students: Claudia and Eveline. Claudia can manage to pay $25,000 for her four years of tuition, upfront; Eveline cannot, and
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: it’s unfair that some people graduate with debt, and others don’t. The ones that do tend to have started off poorer to begin with. And so instead of being a means of social mobility, tuition ends up being a means of perpetuating it – the ones who start off poorer end up poorer. That’s bad, and that’s why we should have no tuition. Eliminate tuition and you eliminate inequality. Let’s take this
The National Graduates Survey figures on debt for the class of 2010 were (quietly) released yesterday. Unlike the employment data they released a few weeks ago, this data actually *is* comparable to results from previous surveys. It is thus a good way to check on whether/how student debt is actually reaching “out of sight” levels. So, let’s start with some interprovincial comparisons. Average Government Student Loan Debt at Graduation, Borrowers Only, By Province and Type of Institution, Class of 2010
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