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. [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Education'
Breaking down financial barriers to higher education is more affordable than you think
January 25th, 2012 · Iglika Ivanova · No Comments · Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Women
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Are international students the key to jobs in BC
September 21st, 2011 · Iglika Ivanova · 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 · Keith Reynolds · 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 [...]
Tags: CETA·Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement·Foreign Trade Zone
Income splitting: a poorly targeted non-commitment with negative labour market implications
March 29th, 2011 · Iglika Ivanova · 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 [...]
Tags: Conservatives·families·income splitting·Stephen Harper·Taxes
Hats off to you, Mr. McKimm
February 17th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 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 · Iglika Ivanova · 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 [...]
Tags: Education·evaluation·health care·incentive pay·patient-focused funding·standardized testing
The Globe’s Report on Private Schools
September 15th, 2010 · Marc Lee · 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 · Iglika Ivanova · 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 [...]
Your Brain on Capitalism
September 7th, 2010 · Peter Prontzos · 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 [...]
The U.K. having problems with its P3s
July 27th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 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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