Universities are often called ivory towers -- elite institutions open only to those who can afford the cost. When Lloyd Axworthy took over as President of the University of Winnipeg in 2004, he resolved to throw open the tower doors to disadvantaged families in the surrounding communities, many of them aboriginal. He developed the Opportunity Fund, which turns post-secondary education from pipe dream to real possibility for aboriginal and low income students.

TORONTO - Ontario's professors are concerned about increased class sizes and the declining quality of post-secondary education, but not so much about ...

Two quiet professors in yesterday's Globe and Mail drew upon that rarest resource in opinion writing (actual evidence). They noted one of the great unspoken truths about post-secondary education in Canada: the leading variable determining whether kids attend university or not is usually cultural pressure within one's social class -- not cost. For some reason, asking university-educated journalists to analyze politically active university students rarely yields these sorts of conclusions, however.

John Duffy (Liberal): Horwath will be under pressure to provide greater clarity regarding her statement about the need for "consensus" in the event of a minority government. I'd imagine she'd rather not leave NDP voters with the impression that she's planning on supporting a Tim Hudak administration.

Jason Lietaer (PC): You know it's unpredictable when leaders start making things up. This week, Mr. McGuinty launched a new jobs plan that's not in his platform, announced a negotiating position for the OMA talks and cancelled a powerplant that looks more like a powerplant than a field.

Jason Lietaer (PC): Ms. Horwath did well. Much improved from her performance on Friday. She was poised and on message, and I think most Ontarians saw her as genuine. Her ideas all sound great until you start to cost them, but that's not the biggest issue in any debate. Details don't win, impressions do.

As a teen, Jaime was sucked into a world of gangs, drugs and violence that threatened to lure him away from school, which in El Salvador is only offered in half days. Jaime tells us he'd have wound up selling drugs, or possibly even dead, if an after-school program called Superate hadn't saved him.

Heather Fraser (NDP): Andrea Horwath's got a plan to freeze tuition fees. Meanwhile the Liberal's are running on a plan to reduce tuition by 30 per cent. A likely story. Just like on other issues, the Liberals want us to believe they'll do something when the record shows they won't.