A Canadian International Labour Network
Public Lecture at York University

Rising Fees and Rising Debt:
Issues, Problems and Options in Financing University Education
A Panel Discussion

Wednesday October 15, 1997

SPEAKERS:

BRUCE CHAPMAN is Director of the Centre for Economic Policy Research at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He is a labour economist with particular interests in higher education financing, unemployment, wage determination and immigration. He has spent considerable time as a consultant to the Australian government, most recently in the Office of the Former Prime Minister, Paul Keating.
In 1988 he was a consultant to the committee which recommended the institution of the world's first national income contingent charge for higher education, and was closely involved in its design. Since then he has given talks and seminars on the Australian higher education financing system in Canada, the UK, Germany, and the US, and has published papers in the area.

ALAN HARRISON is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His research focuses mainly on wage contracts in unionized, private-sector labour markets. He has also been interested for many years in the issue of income-contingent repayment (ICR) of student loans, and it was this interest that led to his organizing a one-day conference at McMaster in early 1994 on the subject. Later the same year, he acted as a consultant to a larger conference on ICR that was organized by the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training. In September 1996, again because of his interest in ICR, he was asked to join a Council of Ontario Universities (COU) Working Group on Student Assistance, and he recently appeared before the provincial Advisory Panel on Future Directions for Post Secondary Education (chaired by David Smith), to discuss issues relating to ICR.

DAN LANG is Professor of Higher Education Management and Finance and Senior Policy Advisor to the President at the University of Toronto, where he was previously Vice Provost, Planning and Budget. He is also Professor of Management and Economics at the UofT's Scarborough Campus. Mr. Lang is the chair of the Council of Ontario Universities' Committee on Accountability, and is Treasurer and a Director of the Centre for Research Libraries in Chicago. When not busy with these responsibilities he is coach of the University of Toronto Varsity Blues Baseball Team.

STACEY YOUNG, is a PhD candidate in the Higher Education Group of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and concurrently, employed at the University of Toronto as a writer in media relations. Her master's thesis (Department of Sociology/OISE/UT) was entitled "Income-contingent student loans: Implications for accessibility in post-secondary education in Ontario". Her past experience incudes membership in the Education Finance committee of Ontario Federation of Labour's Alternative Provincial Budget, work as a business editor and writer at the Globe and Mail's Report on Business, and the editorship of the Varsity, U of T's student newspaper.

SPONSORS:

• THE CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL LABOUR NETWORK (CILN) is a collaborative research venture between the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and McMaster University. Additional funding is provided by the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, Queen's University, York University and Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC). The theme of CILN's research is Labour Market Institutions and Outcomes: A Cross-National Study. Its investigations will focus on the effects of labour-market laws and institutions (e.g., labour legislation, unions, unemployment insurance) on labour-market outcomes (e.g., the distribution of wages, the level and structure of unemployment, and the distribution of resources within the family). The network's research strategy is to link Canadian experts in economics, political science, industrial relations and sociology with researchers working on the same questions in other developed countries, allowing the detailed examination of large-scale statistical databases on more than one country at a time. (http://labour.ciln.mcmaster.ca/)



• THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS AT YORK UNIVERSITY (http://dept.econ.yorku.ca/)



• THE OFFICE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT (ENROLMENT AND STUDENT SERVICES) AT YORK UNIVERSITY



• THE CANADIAN EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH FORUM (CERF) is a non-profit corporation whose objects are: (1) to improve the level of employment and social policy analysis and debate in Canada by encouraging policy related empirical research; and (2) to improve interaction among researchers and policy-makers from governments, universities, business, labour and other communities concerned with employment and social issues. CERF is governed by a rotating board of directors, with ongoing representation from academia, governments, and related organizations. Its main current funding source is Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC), with growing support from other federal and provincial government departments and agencies, universities and private institutions. (http://cerf.mcmaster.ca/)



• HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT CANADA (HRDC) was created in 1993 to provide an integrated approach to Canada's national investment in people. HRDC is one of the largest federal departments with more than 20,000 employees. It administers programs supporting the income of Canadians and human resources programs linked to the requirements of the national economy and labour market. HRDC's programs and services, including Employment Insurance, Human Resource Investment, Income Security and its Labour Program, are delivered through a network of Human Resource Centres of Canada, which are located in hundreds of communities across Canada. (http://www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/)



• THE ECONOMICS STUDENTS ASSOCIATION AT YORK