Beyond the Sticker Shock 2008: A Closer Look at Canadian Tuition Fees

This is a recent Educational Policy Institute monograph (PDF). To be cited as: Usher, Alex, and Duncan, Patrick (2008). Beyond the Sticker Shock: A Closer Look at Canadian Tuition Fees. Toronto, ON: Educational Policy Institute. Worth a read if you'd like to understand that costs and tuition look like in Canada.

In 2006 the Educational Policy Institute released the first edition of ‘Beyond the Sticker Price: A Closer Look at Canadian University Tuition Fees’. The report presented a new way by which to look at the prices and costs associated with university tuition, an alternative to the annual tuition fee report produced by Statistics Canada which more accurately reflects what students and their families actually pay in tuition fees once all various subsidies are taken into account.

The purpose of this paper is to build upon the research and analysis conducted for this paper’s original release. This paper will present available data from a ten year period from 1997‐98 to 2007‐08 and look at real changes in tuition fees, educational tax credits and tax rebate programs over that period. Of particular importance in this paper is the effect of the introduction of new tax rebate programs in four provinces since the last report. These programs have reduced the net cost of education substantially, particularly in Manitoba and New Brunswick. This new data will permit us to generate some alternative calculations of net tuition which are substantially more accurate as measures of cost than the simple tuition fee data. These measures, in turn, will permit us to see precisely how changing government policies on education tax credits and programs are affecting the people who receive them.