Category Education
What’s the optimum net worth of a charitable organisation/university?
Last night I was chatting with someone who works for a think-tank. I work for Carleton University. We both work for charities. Like households, firms, and governments, charities have income and expenses, and a net worth. Consumer choice theory tells us, at least in principle, how much people should save, and what the optimum net […]
The progressive politics of pricing publicly-provided products
Whenever I make the points summarised in this post, someone invariably counters with the following median-voter argument: A policy in which only low-income households benefit will not command majority support. Making the program universal will ensure a more stable electoral base. This argument is not without merit, and it's pretty convincing in certain contexts. But […]
The perils of pricing publicly-provided products
One of the more resilient errors in policy analysis – in Canada, anyway – takes the following form: a) Public goods should be provided at zero price by the government. b) Therefore, goods provided by the government should have zero price. The former assertion is correct, but b) is a non sequitur: not all publicly-provided […]
How increasing tuition fees can increase university participation rates
The Quebec government has just released a collection of studies on financing education, including this one (121-page pdf, in French) written by Valérie Vierstraete, a professor of economics at the Université de Sherbrooke. It addresses exactly the sort of questions that need to be asked and answered in this debate: what would happen to university […]
Why free tuition is like the Bush tax cut
While doing the research for my recent posts on tuition fees, I came across something from the Canadian Federation of Students called ‘Myth or Fact: A guide to common myths about the importance of reducing tuition fees’ (9-page pdf). Here’s an extract: MYTH: “Tuition fee freezes unnecessarily subsidise the cost of postsecondary education for those […]
Increasing tuition subsidies is a regressive policy
It’s budget season at the federal and provincial levels, and in its ongoing campaign to improve access to post-secondary education (PSE), the Canadian Federation of Students is campaigning for reduced tuition fees, and is taking to the streets to make its opinion known. Given what we know about this issue, it’s pretty clear that the […]
Some facts about tuition and access to post-secondary education
The issue of tuition fees and access to post-secondary education is one that keeps popping up, and it’s one that is often a source of frustration to me. One problem is that the basic facts are not well-known. And many of the factoids that have made it into popular circulation are either taken out of […]
‘The first in our family to go to university’
It means a lot to be able to say that, so I was very pleased to see this editorial in the Globe this morning: The first in the door: It’s not a massive expenditure, but the symbolism is important. Ontario has announced that it will spend $5-million on its program to promote higher education among […]
Tuition: Ontario goes in the right direction
Yesterday, the Ontario government announced that it would lift the freeze on tuition fees that it had imposed two years ago, and that it would expand its program of aid for students from low-income households. Student debt is an important issue, but it doesn’t affect all students: only about half of those who graduate with […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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