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Then someone decided to ask Abraham Wald for his opinion. Wald was a statistician of some renown and his advice startled Allied planners: he recommended reinforcing the areas of the returning planes that had been damaged the least. Wald recognized that the planes being studied all had one important factor in common: they had all survived the trip home. If damage tended to be concentrated in certain parts of returning planes, the proper way to interpret this evidence was that the aircraft was able to withstand hits there and still manage to make it back to base. Planes lucky enough to not get hit in the vulnerable areas had the best chance of survival.

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This anecdote is probably the most famous example of survivorship bias at work, and it offers an important insight into the policy recommendations preferred by students groups. They represent the people who have already overcome the obstacles to PSE, and are largely drawn from the top half of the income distribution. Grants to people from low-income families are the equivalent of protecting the undamaged parts of the plane: existing students don’t see the point of them, believing (quite rightly) that relatively few of them would benefit. Lower tuition, on the other hand, amounts to protecting the damaged area of the surviving planes: free money to people who are already attending PSE. (The claim that tuition increases on the order of what has been suggested in Canada would significantly affect PSE participation rates has little empirical support, especially when the increase in grants is taken into account.)

Aside from the notable — and ultimately doomed — exception in Quebec, governments in Canada have shied away from the idea of increasing tuition for those who can pay and strengthening need-based grants. But as government budgets tighten and the need for more highly educated workers increases, this may be a battle that will be fought again.

National Post

Stephen Gordon is professor of economics at Université Laval.