Canada: Universities just for the rich?
2011Tyler Mackinnon 2011-02Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 9 →
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Socialist Action FEBRUARY 2011 9 The first-year university student is typically bright and energetic, ready to embrace a whole new world of ideas that allegedly can be grasped only by the cream of the intellectual crop. The student worked for months, pulling up high school grades, working on countless essays and tests, still recovering from a lack of sleep endured last May and June. But all that work finally paid off. At last s/he is a true scholar. Then comes the tuition bill. The colour literally drains from the eyes. All emotion is sucked dry at a glimpse of the absurd price.
University fees are pushing working-class scholars out of their deserved classroom seats and into the service industry faster than you can say delta-hyde. According to a report by the Canadian Federation of Students, the share of university operating budgets funded by students’ tuition fees more than doubled between 1985 and 2005, rising from 14% to 30%.
This, plus unprecedented levels of student debt, have been a growing concern for working-class students for the past 20 years, despite the popular student movement slogan “education is a right, not a privilege”.
The CFS report shows that student debt skyrocketed between 1999 and 2004, going from $21,177 to over march. Seattle and Portland, Ore., activists are planning to join the April 10 San Francisco march. Canadian activists from three major organizations have pledged to hold solidarity actions on April 9.
Connecticut activists have found a new receptivity to the antiwar message among many community organizations and on the city council of the capital city of Hartford. City Councilman Luis Cotto organized the use of city council chambers for the first meeting of a Hartford Bring the War Dollars Home initiative.
On Jan. 27, activists from more than 10 organizations met to plot out a campaign to win a city council resolution to tell Washington to end the war and use the trillions spent for human needs and jobs. A petition drive, public meetings, and a city-wide hearing on March 17 are designed to be the prelude to the passage of such a resolution and the allocation of funds to get Hartford residents to the April 9 march in New York.
One additional campaign that is animating the movement to end the war is the fight to stop FBI harassment and the victimization of the 23 Midwestern an$28,000—an increase of more than 33% in just five years.
Even the once reliable government assistance programs and scholarships, which were introduced supposedly to give struggling students support while they pursue post-secondary education, take months to deliver.
And when funds are finally released, the amount is barely enough to get a student through the first term. Whatever doesn’t go towards tuition gets spent on text books, transportation and basic living conditions.
Researchers also state that financial issues are the most commonly cited barrier for students trying to get into post-secondary learning. Speaking from experience, I can honestly say that OSAP will cause more sleep loss and stress than any exam ever will!
If something is not done soon about this issue, university will revert to the conditions of the early industrial revolution. Only the rich will be educated; the poor will be denied. That ought to keep the latter from “getting dangerous ideas in their heads”.
If government can afford to fight an unjust and unwinnable war, then it can afford to provide access to free education to every man, woman, and child. Education is a right, not a privilege. Let’s make it so. Drop fees! Tax the corporations! n tiwar and solidarity activists being targeted with grand jury subpoenas (see article, page 4). UNAC activists nationally have distinguished themselves in their effective efforts to foreground the attacks on all movement activists in the run up to the April 9 and 10 national demonstrations. In San Francisco, the Bay Area UNAC is building its April 10 national action (which assembles in Dolores Park) by calling a large rally on Sat., March 5, at the Iglesia Presbiteriana de la Misión, at 23rd and Capp Streets.
The rally will protest FBI harassment and link it to the related attacks on Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, and the “manufacture” of U.S. terror suspects via the “preemptive prosecutions of Muslim Americans, and the increased government attacks on the Latino, Black, and immigrant communities.”
For more information on the national April actions and for downloadable flyers, visit www.nationalpeaceconference. org. Activists are encouraged to quickly send their bus and transportation information to [email protected] for posting on the site. n