Access to post-secondary education in Canada continues to be a controversial issue, and the roles of factors such as student financial aid, family background, and personal aspirations remain insufficiently understood. Persistence towards graduation even less so. Beginning with three broad overview chapters and continuing with a series of analyses on particular elements of the access and persistence dynamic, Who Goes? Who Stays? What Matters? addresses choice, opportunity, and barriers - including financial ones - related to post-secondary participation. Contributors provide compelling insights into the factors that begin to operate long before students reach the end of high school, and point to the need to consider policy initiatives that start equally early and go beyond simply making schooling affordable.

With a strong empirical emphasis and based primarily on Statistics Canada's Youth in Transition Survey, the studies in this collection make an important contribution that will inform policy discussions and decision-making in years to come.

Contributors include Lesley Andres and Maria Adamuti-Trache (University of British Columbia), Patrick Bussière (Human Resources and Social Development Canada), Lorne Carmichael (Queen's), Louis Christofides, Michael Hoy, Zhi (Jane) Li, and Thanasis Stengos (University of Guelph), Kathleen Day (University of Ottawa), Ross Finnie (University of Ottawa), Marc Frenette (Statistics Canada), Jorgen Hansen (Concordia), David Johnson (Wilfrid Laurier), Felice Martinello (Brock), Anne Motte (Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation), Richard E. Mueller (University of Lethbridge), Arthur Sweetman (Queen's University), Hanqing Theresa Qiu (MESA Project), Alex Usher (Educational Policy Institute), and Yan Zhang (Statistics Canada).