Puzzling Educational Stat

[c9]

Paul Wells posted some interesting numbers on tuition recently. Unfortunately the original article that triggered it is gone in the new Maclean's revamp, but the data is all out there with statscan.

What's better: higher tuition, or lower tuition? Why?

This is a no-brainer for the "typical" left-wing (or right-wing) person. Especially when they're young and still freshly wounded from tuition rates. However there's an interesting puzzle here: Quebec has the lowest tuition and the lowest university participation rate. Nova Scotia has the highest tuition and the highest rate of university participation.

Hmmm.

Comments

[jdhorner.livejournal.com]

if the university wants to charge 25,000 tuition annually, and the government covers the first 20k, making it five grand for the student, shouldn't the part that was covered by the government still go to the school? or support the school in SOME way? i mean, having the govn't make it cheaper is one thing, but keeping the portion they reduced is just stealing. or something. what i'm getting at is that saying they won't make as much off the students doesn't seem like it should hold water. the tuition is being -subsidized-, not actually LOWERED. right?

and i'm not saying that everyone should get into every school. but if they all cost around the same money, it should be other factors that make each of them "better", "more attractive", "competitive" than the next. i still think that the best and the brightest DO deserve to have specific opportunities made available to them in the way of very hard to get into programs, and schools even. (otherwise, like in the states, everyone would want to go to the best schools, and we'd all have a bunch of annoying havard grads running around)

and your last point makes sense. that's the sort of system i'm personally used to. in the US, every student MUST submit a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) that gives them a magic number: their family's "EFC", or, expected family contribution. the lower that number, the better, because it means you're eligible for more federal aid. my number was always zero, and so i always qualified for the maximum aid levels from UVA and the government. (since my mom was poor, single, and had another dependent child)

of course, there are also academicm merit-based scholarships, based on high school grades, standardized test scores, and other factors, etc... as well as stipends and grants given to minorities and other special groups.

ANYWAY. higher education in the US has gotten out of hand. it was nearly $30,000 per year for out-of-state students at univ. of virginia when i left (the country's tied-for-number-1 public university), boston university was over 40k, and i believe that UPenn was well into the mid-40s. and that's just for each year of the four for a bachelors degree. were i to still get an EFC of "0", both the feds and the school would only subsidize so much, leaving me to take out loans for the rest. friends of mine not so lucky to have a zero EFC leave their undergrad careers with debt close to six figures. JUST FOR A BA DEGREE.

that's why i can't believe that anyone would ever, first of all, claim that higher education in canada is inaccessible. i'm curious: what's average university tuition per year in canada? for the top 10 or 20 rated schools? per province?

i certainly have no problem with raised rates, as long as drastic measures are made so that not a single impoverished or low-income person is thusly eliminated from the chance to attend the same school/program they would have otherwise been able to before. and NOT with loans.

sorry. i'm rambling now. higher education in canada, like many other things, just confuses me. for a country with so many less people than the US, everything seems MORE complicated than it needs to be. (e.g. politics, education, healthcare... but i'm still getting used to it all, so there you go)