tory university.

The Federal Tories announced their Post-Secondary Education policy yesterday…

Here it is from Conservative.ca:

• “Providing students or their parents with a tax credit of up to $500 to help cover the costs of textbooks;
• Working with the provinces to increase family income thresholds for student loan eligibility;
• Exempting the first $10,000 of student scholarship or bursary income from taxation; and
• Ensure dedicated funding for education by removing postsecondary education funding from the Canada Social Transfer and placing it in an independent Canada Education and Training Transfer.”

okie dokie, here’s our take…

a) What’s up with using the tax system to fix everything? Seriously, we’re glad that the Tories are thinking about the textbook problem, but textbooks are expensive in September and January. Not May. How is a tax credit going to help someone when they need the money? Let’s segway into point b…

b) “Working with the provinces to increase family income thresholds for student loan eligibility” … okay, let’s make sure we got this one right… a Conservative government would make it easier for students to get into debt? sure…

c) The last two points are fairly straight forward. We would definitely support a dedicated Federal-Provincial PSE transfer and agree that scholarship and bursary money should be tax-free.

d) We were slightly surprised that some of the more controversial policies included in the Conservative Party’s Policy Declaration didn’t make the cut… including the dissolution of the Millennium Scholarship Foundation and implementation of an Income-Contingent Student Loan Repayment scheme…

Are these policies “hidden” somewhere? Perhaps in an “agenda?” 😉