CCPA Policy Note

Entries Tagged as 'Education'

Breaking down financial barriers to higher education is more affordable than you think

January 25th, 2012 · · No Comments · Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Women

In a new report released today by the CCPA, I revisit the important question of who really pays for university education. Convention wisdom has it that the public heavily subsidizes post-secondary education. The illusion of a subsidy comes from the fact that tuition fees, high as they are, don’t cover the entire cost of education. [...]

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Are international students the key to jobs in BC

September 21st, 2011 · · 1 Comment · Economy, Education, Employment & labour

The second day of the roll out of the Premier’s jobs agenda was marked by a single announcement made at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. The focus of this piece of the jobs puzzle was ramping up international education and regional skills training. The idea of leveraging education, especially post-secondary education, to boost the economy [...]

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Foreign trade issues playing out in BC

June 10th, 2011 · · 1 Comment · Education, Municipalities

Last week Premier Christy Clark took the unprecedented step of promising there would be public consultation regarding the Province’s position on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union. If this really happens it would be an important opportunity.  The current government has never allowed the public to have a [...]

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Income splitting: a poorly targeted non-commitment with negative labour market implications

March 29th, 2011 · · 6 Comments · Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes, Women

I was on the CBC Early Edition this morning, discussing Stephen Harper’s first election promise: income splitting for families with children. If you missed it, you can listen to the podcast here (I’m at about 1:08:00 onwards). Since five minutes is too short for any kind of informed discussion, and I think that informed discussions [...]

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Hats off to you, Mr. McKimm

February 17th, 2011 · · 3 Comments · Education, Environment, resources & sustainability, Provincial budget & finance

In the mountain of material presented with the 2011 BC Budget (OK, much of it was an electronic mountain) there was one remarkable nugget of candor. Each ministry and agency is required to prepare a Service Plan that is published with the Budget.  These were initiated originally to provide more transparency in government work.  Over [...]

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Why incentive pay won’t fix education or health care

October 14th, 2010 · · 4 Comments · Children & youth, Education, Health care, Privatization, P3s & public services

It turns out — surprise! — that it’s really hard to measure quality in complex social systems and that employing simplistic quantitative measures can backfire. That’s the take-home message from a recent talk by UC Berkley economist and public policy professor Jesse Rothstein who came to SFU to present his latest research on using standardized [...]

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The Globe’s Report on Private Schools

September 15th, 2010 · · Comments Off · Education

If there was truth in news reporting, the Globe’s “report” on private schools (Sept. 14) would be labeled a “special advertising supplement”. It is essentially a cheerleading exercise for private schools, funded by advertising from private schools, so you’ll find no news in this report. Which is too bad because the topic of private schools [...]

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Young university grads having a hard time in the Canadian labour market

September 13th, 2010 · · 6 Comments · Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare

An interesting chart from The Economist shows that over a third of young university graduates in Canada end up working in low skilled jobs. In fact, Canada is second only to Spain in the OECD when it comes to young grads employed in jobs that fail to take advantage of their skills. There is certainly [...]

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Your Brain on Capitalism

September 7th, 2010 · · 3 Comments · Children & youth, Education, Environment, resources & sustainability, Poverty, inequality & welfare

At least as far back as Sokrates, people have speculated on the relationship between psychology and politics. In the 20th century, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and members of the Frankfurt School (such as Herbert Marcuse) pioneered discussion about how individual dispositions affect one’s social and political ideologies. On the other hand, social psychologists like Stanley [...]

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The U.K. having problems with its P3s

July 27th, 2010 · · 2 Comments · Education, Health care, Privatization, P3s & public services

Britain, which led the charge for public private partnerships under both Conservative and Labour governments over the past decades, is now seeing problems with the projects. This month the new coalition government cancelled the controversial Building Schools for the Future program.  Michael Gove, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education said the P3 school program [...]

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