This September, like every year, a new group of high school graduates headed to college or university to pursue higher education. But today’s generation of students is in for a very different experience from the ones their parents had. On campuses across the country shiny new buildings are popping up, bearing corporate logos or the [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Education'
Time to Rethink The Way We Fund Higher Education
October 9th, 2012 · Iglika Ivanova · Comments Off · Children & youth, Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Provincial budget & finance, Taxes
Tags: cost of education·Education·higher education·role of government·student debt·tuition·university
Cost of Learning Growing Faster than Incomes
September 11th, 2012 · Iglika Ivanova · Comments Off · Children & youth, Education, Employment & labour
A new report by the CCPA, Eduflation and the High Cost of Learning, shows that average university tuition bill in Canada has grown three times faster than inflation over the last 20 years. It’s also outpaced the growth of family incomes, making university considerably less affordable for the average Canadian family than it used to [...]
Tags: affordability·cost of education·cost of learning·Education·higher education·post-secondary education·student debt·student loans·tuition fees·university
Seven reasons why you should support a move to low tuition fees for higher education
May 29th, 2012 · Iglika Ivanova · 11 Comments · Children & youth, Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Privatization, P3s & public services
Much of the media coverage of the Quebec student protests has dismissed the protestors as cranky middle and upper-middle class children trying to protect their unfair privilege. And in fact, the vast majority of today’s university students do come from relatively well-off families. But rather than weakening their position, this supports the protestors’ claims that [...]
Christy Clark, George Abbott – meet Jeffrey Moore
March 14th, 2012 · Jonathan Chapnick · 3 Comments · Children & youth, Education, Human rights, Law & legal issues
There’s a freight train heading for BC’s education system — and it’s not being driven by government or teachers. This train hit the tracks long before the current collective bargaining dispute. Its operator is an eight-year-old boy from North Vancouver, named Jeffrey Moore. With the support of his family, Jeffrey is driving a human rights [...]
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
On tough times and priorities
September 10th, 2009 · Iglika Ivanova · 2 Comments · Children & youth, Education, Provincial budget & finance
The BC government cannot afford $130,000 for the budget of BC School Sports, a volunteer organization which organizes sporting events for students. This is likely to affect 100,000 high school athletes across the province whose meets and competitions will be canceled. “It’s not business as usual right now,” explained Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid, quoted in [...]
Tags: budget·children·Education·Olympics·spending cuts·sports
School funding an election issue at the local level
April 30th, 2009 · Keith Reynolds · Comments Off · Children & youth, Education
It hasn’t particularly reached the level of a provincial election issue, but school funding is quietly percolating along as an issue at the local level. The provincial election overlaps with the time that school boards set their budgets and many of those school boards are making cuts due to lack of funding. A few examples? [...]
Tags: budget·Education·school boards·schools·service cuts·teachers

