This year student-loan debt surpassed credit-card debt for the first time. Credit quality in other classes of consumer debt has been improving, but delinquency rates on student loans are rising as more students are borrowing more money than ever before.

The high cost of a university education has led to questions about the reliability of post-secondary studies as an investment. Higher education could be viewed as a commodity of dubious value when, in Canada for example, 18 per cent of university graduates end up earning half or less of the national median income.

In the meantime, there needs to be a repricing of student debt. That would be a bad thing for taxpayers, but a good thing overall. Just as (student) borrowers need to understand the risks they are exposing themselves to by going to university, voters need to understand the liabilities that governments are taking on when they subsidise students. If information about government subsidies to students were made public, other useful data would follow - on the average financial returns to graduates of specific subjects, for example. Those studying less lucrative subjects would have to pay more, or be subsidised more. It would be a controversial approach, but a more educated one.

But the connection between a university education and a satisfying and successful working life is not speculative. University graduates have the highest employment rate in Canada and are much more likely to find full-time jobs. A degree is an insurance policy against the vagaries of the global economy. In the 2008 recession, says Statistics Canada, degree holders were less likely to be laid off, and more likely to be hired back promptly if they were laid off.

And finally I defer to the brilliant and frugal Ben Franklin (his raised eyebrows on the U.S. 100 dollar bill a steady rebuke to our spendthrift ways) who said a few hundred years ago: “If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” In the twenty-first century, however, Franklin's views on knowledge are becoming a tougher sell in a world where the love of knowledge is increasingly being reduced to an economic commodity.

Ontario now has one of the world’s best-performing schools systems. It was, thus, quite a treat when I recently had occasion for a visit to Cornwall's St. Joseph's Secondary School along with Bishop Durocher and other members of Cornwall's major faith communities. In my brief remarks to the full assembly of students on that occasion, I acknowledged St. Joseph's excellent educational standards within the context of the overall provincial miracle in the public school system.

When Dalton McGuinty was elected Ontario’s premier in 2003, he embraced “whole-system reform”. Instead of directing reforms from the centre, the government encouraged schools to set their own targets and sent experienced teams to help them get there.

The Ontario reformers made a special point of gaining full public support. Every school — even in the remotest “fly-in” places — had to be improved by the reforms and had to show in regular inspections that it was making progress. Ontario has become a byword internationally for decentralised, popular reform.

Ontario's performance is all the more impressive when you take into consideration that the province has a high proportion of immigrants, many without English as a first language, Schools with large numbers of immigrant children have been able to apply for special help and to choose whether to extend the school day to do this, or to work longer with the slower pupils.

Granted these efforts have not come cheap — since 2004, total funding for education has gone up by 30%. And being as we're in the midst of a provincial election. their success is open to debate as part of any healthy electoral campaign discussion. But unlike the last two provincial elections, the school system is much less of an issue in the 2011 election. Rightly so!