Fees and university access

Jeffery Simpson picks up the subject of access to university in his Globe and Mail column today. He makes the following observation about university tuition fees and access:

Some governments have tried to ease the financial path to university by keeping fees low, ostensibly to improve access. (Quebec’s are the lowest in North America, but there’s no evidence of higher participation rates.) Study after study has rebuffed that theory, in that higher fees are actually not much, if any, deterrent – not when compared with a host of other factors. But, politically, keeping fees down has often been attractive, although they’ve been rising above inflation in recent years to make up for the reduction in government funding.