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, 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.
