I went to McGill in the late '80s and early '90s when tuition fees were less than $1,200 a year, so with summer jobs and some parental help I graduated from my first degree debt-free. For my MA, which I took in Ontario, I worked part-time and graduated after one year with a debt of $10,000.

By way of comparison: my partner went to university in Ontario after grants were eliminated, and when the first round of tuition fee hikes were implemented. He completed a BA and then an MA, and graduated with a debt load (and compound interest) requiring monthly payments of $650 for 10 years.

It is impossible to turn a blind eye to the numbers. On average, a student in Canada graduates with $27,000 of public debt. Collectively, students owe the federal government over $15 billion and much more in provincial and private loans such as bank loans or credit cards. Loans given out by the federal government increase by roughly $1 million a day and students are taking on more debt than ever before.

On Wednesday, William Watson wrote a comment piece in the Financial Post in which he was critical of Armine Yalnizyan's recent essay on inequality. In his piece, Mr. Watson alleges that Armine "is guilty of fantastical reminiscence," particularly with respect to her take on post-secondary education (PSE). Among other things, Mr. Watson points to the fact that PSE enrolment has increased very substantially over the past half-century in Canada.

Last March, Keith Dunne and I wrote an opinion piece on Danny Williams' post-secondary education (PSE) legacy in Newfoundland and Labrador. Among other things, we pointed out that average undergraduate tuition fees (for domestic students) in Newfoundland and Labrador are $2,624/yr., compared with $5,138 for Canada as a whole and $6,307 in Ontario.

With a provincial election slated to take place in Newfoundland and Labrador on October 11, Newfoundland and Labrador's NDP is proposing to take the province even further down the path of PSE affordability.

An Ontario election is slated for October 6, and the reigning Liberal Party will attempt to pull off a third consecutive majority government. In that vein, the Liberals have recently made a slew of campaign promises in the post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Notably, they've committed to reducing undergraduate tuition for "middle-class Ontario families" by 30 per cent, amounting to "$1,600 per student in university and $730 per student in college."

According to a September 5 Toronto Star article:

Last week, the CCPA released a paper by David Macdonald and Erika Shaker entitled Under Pressure: The Impact of Rising Tuition Fees on Ontario Families.

The paper does a good job of explaining which households have been most impacted by rising tuition fees in Ontario. Points made in the paper include the following:

- In light of rising levels of household debt, Canadian households are not in the same position to take on new debt today as they were 20 years ago.

In light of plans by the Charest government to increase tuition fees in Quebec by 75 per cent over the next five years, Eric Martin and Simon Tremblay-Pepin have written a recent article on Quebec tuition fees. (The hyperlink I've provided is for the French-language version of the article, but I'm told that the English-language version will be available online very shortly.)

The article points out the following:

Mainstream policy wonks often claim that tuition fees and rising levels of student debt in Canada are relatively inconsequential. They argue that though the costs of higher education for students (and sometimes their families) are increasing, so is post-secondary enrollment, meaning that raising the cost of post-secondary education clearly doesn't block access.