alex usher

The burden of carrying an average loan with an average salary has fallen by more than a third

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but the Higher Education Strategy folks have released a new brief on the voting intentions of Canadian university students:

No party is making a serious effort at providing federal leadership

Today, the good folks over at Higher Education Strategy Associates released their long-awaited analysis of the party platforms regarding post-secondary education. They were clearly rejigging parts of the analysis right up to the end – the document is larded with pictures of the party leaders taken from VintageVoter.ca.

Colleague Wells points us to what I agree is a very good piece by Ivison on David Naylor’s visit to Ottawa. Toward the end of his column, Ivison references a piece on the recession and higher education, written by Alex Usher and Ryan Dunn of the Educational Policy Institute.

There’s been a lot of free-floating hand-wringing in the wake of a proposal to have Canada concentrate its research spending in a relatively few universities. Most of the complaints have been about the dangers of “elitism” — as if university was about something else. Canada already has a de facto two-tiered university system, and within each university, there is a two- if not three-tiered hierarchy of instructors. The solecism the five schools seem to have made is a) pointing it out, and b) suggesting that we might as well acknowledge the hierarchy and make our funding formulae reflect it.

“Nobody has any idea how student aid works,” says post-secondary expert

Ex-CEO says province should use Irish model for post-secondary education

Depressed by the price of university? These programs can help lighten your debt

New study says the real cost of university is falling. One province is even paying its students

“Loudly and intemperately” if he hears the phrase “Canada needs to have its own Bologna process” again this year.