Over the past 15 years, revenue from student tuition has tripled, public student debt has ballooned (reaching $28 billion by 2012) and working conditions for campus staff have deteriorated. It's time for renewal in our post-secondary education sector to address decades of bad policy choices.
This paper offers seven proposals to expand access to high-quality, publicly funded post-secondary education without upfront costs. These proposals, which are also included in the 2017 Alternative Federal Budget [4], will address decades of neglect in the sector, and are framed around two new public policy instruments: a Post-Secondary Renewal Transfer (PSE-RT), and a new federal Post-Secondary Education Act to be modeled on the Canada Health Act.
Voir la version française: Le bien-fondé du renouvellement de l’éducation postsecondaire [5].