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

[canuckotter.livejournal.com]

Nova Scotia has less students, but in fact has the highest percentage of out-of-province students of all the provinces.

One possible way of looking at it is that Nova Scotia has more universities than it really needs for its own populace. Universities need a certain size before they're cost-effective, so Nova Scotian institutes have lower acceptance criteria than other schools so that they can get enough people into school to pay for the expense of having the school in the first place.

As for Quebec... Even many franco-Ontarians don't want to go to school in Quebec. Anglophones are even less likely to consider it. It's no surprise they don't have as many out-of-province students.