Student Aid Time-Bomb: The Coming Crisis in Canada's Financial Aid System. Canadian Educational Report Series

This paper describes a looming crisis in Canadian student financial assistance. It begins by summarizing the known evidence with respect to student financial assistance. It notes that many studies have emphasized the central importance of grants targeted to low-income students as a means to expand of access to post-secondary education, but that the same studies have tended to show that subsidies for higher income students have little or no effect. The paper then looks at four sets of threats which are currently converging on the student aid system and especially its system of aid for low-income students. (Contains 8 footnotes, 4 figures and 1 table. A bibliography is included.) [This document was published by the Educational Policy Institute (EPI).]