Differential Knowledge

Watch Stephen Colbert discuss "College Credit" on tonight's Word. Continue reading...

Tuition Relief Now! Campaign

See what other students have done.

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Rising Tuition is a Myth?

It was quite the relief to see yesterday that "the real cost of university is falling". Here I thought that university prices were going up, and that accessibility was an ongoing issue -- if not an increasing one. But apparently "one province is even paying its students" when tax rebates are considered, according to an EPI study. So where did I go wrong?


Was it the increasing housing costs? Maybe textbook prices? How about childcare? Wait, have I touched on tax rebates before? Let's see:

"A report released yesterday by the Canada Millennium Scholarships Foundation asserted that student aid may not be going to those who need it most. The report indicates a fundamental shift from needs-based grants to tax credits and rebates, a move that tends to favour the more affluent and leave the truly needy further behind."

And on that note, the EPI study reports that Alberta relies more heavily on tax credits than any other province. Continue reading...

Join the Conversation

The purpose of this blog is to discuss the issue of accessibility, in all its forms and manifestations. Discuss articles you've stumbled upon, studies you've researched, images and video you've found interesting and relevant. Relay to your fellow students how this issue has impacted you, or how it has affected a group or subset of students. For all discussion of the actual issue of access, this blog is the place.


For discussion of movement strategy and tactics, Facebook is your venue. Use the Restricted Access group page to share ideas on how to reach out to students, or on how to encourage members to come to an event.

Let everyone know of your event by hosting one from the campaign group. By using a central host, you are keeping everyone in the loop regarding action on campus, and are helping to facilitate a broader and deeper movement that can connect all students.

Use Twitter for updates. Sign up to keep everyone aware of your work on this issue, and to communicate to both your colleagues and the broader community. Follow other students and campaigners to see what they're doing to contribute to this overall movement. Our Twitter page will let you know what progress we've made in our central messaging and lobbying strategies.

And use our websites. Our resource page outlines the accessibility issue and the campaign overview, while our action page tells you how you can get involved. So join the movement, and join the conversation. Continue reading...

Preliminary Meeting

Thank you to everyone who braved the cold to make the preliminary meeting hosted by the SU, GSA, and RHA. It is very encouraging to see so many people attend a session this far in advance of the campaign.


We hope this momentum will only grow.

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Study(ing) Aid

With the economic downturn, many university leaders have begun questioning stewardship priorities, often with a resulting shift to student aid. Take Bobbi Mark, vice president for institutional advancement at Barnard College, who recently empathized,

"We can delay in building that new building, but we can't say to the entire sophomore class: Why don't you take a year off?"

That year off may be forced on more students than higher education officials expected, according to a number of recent studies.


From the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education came three reports which examined the effect of two major need-based scholarships. These reports concluded that generous grants not only increase access, but also increase retention, especially among low-income recipients.

Unfortunately, that level of aid is all too often absent, a study by the National Association for College Admission Counseling determines. This report details that although many institutions claim to be need-blind, their aid only covers a small portion of costs -- resulting in a "gapping" effect that can leave many students behind. One of the reasons: colleges and universities are spending less on need-based aid than in the past.

Which brings us to a recent study from the Institute for Higher Education Policy. This study finds that the increasing costs of university and the dwindling availability of aid are preventing access to qualified students. More than 80 percent of non-college goers -- who had earned at least a 2.5 high school GPA, taken a college-preparatory curriculum, and taken some levels of advanced mathematics -- reported that the availability of financial aid was either “extremely” or “very” important in their decision not to enroll.

And some institutions are responding. Not only is Barnard College going to "delay building that new building", but they are also going to concentrate their efforts on increasing aid. This initiative of shifting donor contributions to student aid has been adopted by numerous universities, with some community colleges even waiving tuition for their local unemployed.

Let's hope it's enough to prevent students from taking the year off -- if they can afford it in the first place. Continue reading...

A Step Behind

A report released yesterday by the Canada Millennium Scholarships Foundation asserted that student aid may not be going to those who need it most. The report indicates a fundamental shift from needs-based grants to tax credits and rebates, a move that tends to favour the more affluent and leave the truly needy further behind.


That aid does not go to the most needy students should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the discussion on student aid south of the border. Calls for reform of the student-aid system have been made by various groups and individuals, including Margaret Spellings, the U.S. Secretary of Education, and the Rethinking Student Aid study group. Both outline the importance of reducing the enrolment gap between more affluent and less privileged students.

Both also outline the importance of grants. Increases in aid in the U.S. have often seen subsequent increases in grants, making the accessibility issue primarily one of background (ie. who receives the grants). And this is why Millennium Scholarship's results may come as a surprise: our accessibility issue remains very generally a financial one.

Which puts us a step behind. And when we're behind a country where a "sharp rise in inequality was largely due to an educational slowdown", it's not a pleasant thought.

Originally posted October 23. Continue reading...

Recognizing Realities

The National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges is encouraging colleges and universities to be more transparent with their budgets. They argue that if universities want to be persuasive about funding, they must show where the money is going.


John Lombardi, President of Louisiana State, said that most universities have "obscure, confused and mucked-up budgets" in order to maintain competitiveness with other institutions. Cross-subsidization of budgets gives university leaders messaging control and allows for maneuvers "like the common practice of using undergraduate tuition to help finance research programs."

Of course, these are American post-secondary institutes, where the battle between public and private institutions is at the foreground. This makes the transparency argument all the more compelling north of the border, where a look at economic realities in depth and across the board can help ensure that public institutions are indeed serving the public.

Such a view could very well generate the sort of response that was seen at Brown University. In recognition of the "economic difficulties that many of [the] students and their families are facing", the institution is allowing students to register for classes regardless of debts they may owe the university.

Now, it's worth noting that this move may have been as much a matter of preserving enrollment as it was a matter of being sympathetic to students. But this only goes to show that a recognition of current economic realities is all that many students ask for. Continue reading...