Ah, and thus you will perpetuate the irony of your ad hominem remarks.

After all, it is only my own actions and words I control. By providing a medium through which people can flame each other, I would be enabling that kind of behaviour. I hold myself to a higher standard.

Another option would be to post “caveat lector” or “caveat scriptor” by the comments option. That way people would be warned about what lies ahead, and what they can expect.

BTW, I am not who you expect. I am a very proper British matron type. Good day to you, sir.

You asked for a bit of history… here ya go:

I made it through university by taking out student loans every year of my undergrad–and yes, I took an extra year, because I thought the learning was worth it, not because I thought more debt would be “cool.” I ended my undergrad with over 43 thousand dollars in debt. The only way I could do my masters degree is through university funding.

Scholarships… phht. If they aren’t elusive, they aren’t much. I received one needs-based bursary until the province ended that program; or at least it seemed like the government did at the time, because I knew many other people that were receiving the NB Bursary, and the money all-of-sudden dried up after my first year of university. Everyone I knew stopped getting money, too. Our student loan documents just said “0″ under “NB Bursary” for about two years. And one friend from high school was sent a letter asking her to pay some of her bursary back, because she moved in with her boyfriend, also a full-time university student from New Brunswick.

The three “merit-based” scholarships I got from the university, in five years of study, have amounted to $1225. Not much when measured against $43000. I applied two separate years for UNB’s “special bursary” (meaning you’re so broke, you’re actually in a deficit, meaning you can’t pay bills or buy food–and you’re not eligible for this special bursary if you don’t have a deficit when filling out the budget on their application form). The first year I applied, I was given $500, and $300 the second year. The maximum limit is $1000.

Just to flag another issue with these bursaries: obviously under-advertised, you know in September that you’ll be broke, you can’t apply until November or so, and you don’t get the money until February or March. Serious problems there! Wait four months for a cheque that will barely pay one month’s rent, if at all.

I also had part-time jobs throughout the school year except during my first year, and I’ve always worked in the summer.

My twin sister took time off after high school to work and decide what she wanted to do. Unfortunately, working minimum wage and low paying jobs in New Brunswick, does not allow a young New Brunswicker to save up for an education. She has taken out student loans to pay for school and has just finished her second year, and has also worked part-time through the the school year.

My older sister was a bit luckier in a way, because she went to college instead, and only had to take out a very small loan…

My older brother just has not gone to school. He has simply worked. In his early 30s with no formal education past high school, what prospects does he have in New Brunswick? I’ll guess we’ll have to wait and see how “Self-Sufficiency” pans out…

Since the implementation of tuition fees in Britain, even if “moderate,” university enrollment has decreased significantly and the “labour” government has admitted it to be one of its biggest mistakes. (We can probably all imagine what some of their other “big mistakes” are, ha.)

And in case you’re wondering, the middle-class wouldn’t have to be taxed any more than what it already is to facilitate the elimination of tuition fees. All it would take is some political will, because it would only cost about four billion dollars according to a study done by Michael Conlon for the CAUT. Oh, and how much did the Harper government just tack on to “new military spending”? Thirty billion dollars! Surely they could spare a few billion to pay for some education instead of more guns…

To Redactor: if by redacting comments you mean deleting what others have said; how dare you suggest you can sensor us? You may disagree with what others have said, just as I do. It may be frivolous or “specious” commentary, but it is our voluntary commentary. If the “red” in your name is an allusion to the colour traditionally associated with communism and socialism, and if you’ve done your history studies then you should recognize what happens when the right and ability to speak freely is stifled or eliminated, ad hominem irony aside…

The threat to redact our comments, if you have that ability, is absolutely petulant. If you are who I supsect, you should know better.

Having shared this topic with British friends of mine- who pay modest university fees, but pay through the nose for private schools to enable their kids to apply to these universities- I think it boils down to a choice between making universities fair for all to potentially attend (meaning, abolishing all fees and levying taxes a considerable amount- you think middle-class families wouldn’t feel that?), or turning university education into an investment that all can potentially make if they so choose (reasonable fees and low-interest loans- ones that the lower middle-class can access) with accommodation for families of little means whose students are academically deserving. My point in arguing for the second option- and yes, partly to play devil’s advocate (because on the surface, free education for everyone would be great)- is that adopting a scheme of reasonable tuition would stem bureaucratic waste, and wouldn’t necessarily save anyone more grief since taxes would come into play.

If you’re asking whether middle-class families in New Brunswick can really save for the second-highest tuitions in the country (is that 5% really accurate?), ask yourself what it would look like if they were taxed to pay for unversity instead. Abolishing fees outright, I think, would simply shift the burden on middle-class families from tuition time to tax time, and in the end they’d be paying the same price (who’s to say governments wouldn’t keep increasing taxes in order to keep universities competitive with their international counterparts?) In the end, I think you’d still be asking the same question.

And let’s not forget what RB stated about the bevy scholarships- NOT loans, people, but actualy gifts of money- that are available for the deserving. I think Rb’s experience refutes the claim that scholarships are “elusive”, under the current state of affairs, more people can’t go to university than already are. If more students applied for these instead of loans, it might free up some of the government’s available cash and enable it to offer lower-interest loans, and maybe a few more scholarships of its own. I don’t see why people who CAN pay for unversity shouldn’t have to, in order to free up finite resources for those who don’t have the financial wherewithal to do the same.

I consider the matter settled. Pease carry on.

Graham has alluded that some posters post tripe just to take up space. It’s true, I post laregely for the stimulation of banter on a topic- who doesn’t, since it’s an open discussion forum (and yes, I do read the linked articles and do some side-searches before opening my yap)? But I think that all readers are savvy enough to assess the difference between immature or time-wasting arguments and those that are being painted as so simply for voicing dissent. Nonetheless, the Redactor pointed out that some of us need to holster the snark when levelling a point. Will do. Once again, my apologies- and my name is Alexandra.

By the way, on a completely different topic, I believe that your comment is itself boarders on ad hominem by the strict definition in that it does not address the issue — which is not the mean spirited nature of the conversation but on the appropriateness of posting tripe for no other reason than to take up space — and it instead attacks the writers for being immature (as true as that might be). Also, I have to say that your anonymous comment about other people’s anonymous comments is rather ironic.

Apologies to the readers of the site if they find the comments section less than impressive. Feel free to just read the excellent article that are posted and ignore the ramblings that accompany them.

And I think university should be free, because my parents sure as hell didn’t come from that lucky 5% of the population that could save up for my education, or my twin sister’s, or my older sisters college education. Not to mention I have an older brother that didn’t go to college or university. How fuck are two working class parents in New Brunswick supposed to save up for four children to go to university or college in the province with the second highest tuition rates? I’d like to see a middle-class family do that.

I find it funny that the right-wing always break into personal stories of hardship and people using the system to get ahead or that their parents just didn’t spend enough time with them looking for the ever elusive scholarships. Nonsense. Your posts are based in the right-wing (you don’t have to be a rabid Milton Friedmanite to be labeled a right-wing ideologue) and I am assuming only an ideologue would bother spending so much of your time posting such tripe on a news blog dedicated to left-wing analysis. Your comments are completely without analysis or citation and yet you demand even more citation from anything posted by the contributors to this site. Your tone is combative and insulting and in no way do give any evidence that you really expect to engage in argument that is constructive. In fact, the only reason I respond is for the readers who actually care about these issues.

And for your information, “right-wing” is not a label that I have attached to you, it is a political position that you have chosen to take on this site from day one. It is not the same as calling you a fascist (I have no evidence), a liberal (you give no economic analysis to suggest this position) or a conservative (though, I have my suspicions) as it carries with it little other than quality of not being on the Left. Your suggestion that tuition can be used to self-regulate people choosing the university road is evidence enough for the label. Only someone who can afford tuition would suggest that money be used as a barrier for people poorer than then to decide what to do with their lives. It would continue the class divisions and make sure that the rich continue to have easy access by excluding the working people from university.

Tuition directly relates to access of Post-Secondary Education the same way as user fees limit access to everything else in this economy. The same economic system that limits access to for-profit, user pay health care limits access to PSE. The higher the cost, the less able the poorer people are able to access it. You don’t have to be a Marxist to understand that relationship but it certainly helps in the explanation of why tuition fees continue to rise.

Also, the day that you start to discount Marxist analysis of the current economic system is the day that you stop understanding anything about capitalism. If you actually read anything on this site you would see that all business news agencies and writers understand class analysis. It is the basis for the understanding of the trade. If you don’t believe me then you should start using that education a little and read the business news agencies like Bloomberg and Thompson-Reuters.

Oh, and to respond with citations (even though you have never given any indication that you read anything on this site) you can see below. The research on access to education is vast and solid. And don’t give me any of that nonsense around low tuition fees being a gift to the rich. That pseudo statistical work has be disproven with simple math and a basic understanding of economics (as well as some extremely complex statistical analysis and understanding of the social economy).

Grants are more fair than loans. Tuition fees limit access to PSE.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/universityaccess/story/0,,2256304,00.html

http://www.cfsadmin.org/quickftp/Strategy_for_Change_2007.pdf

https://caut.ca/pages.asp?page=221

http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=11F0019M2005263

http://www.cfsontario.ca/mysql/FS-Tuition%20Fees-2005.pdf

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/index.cfm?act=news&call=807&do=article&pA=BB736455

http://www.cma.ca/multimedia/staticcontent/CMA/Content_Images/Inside_cma/submissions-government/tuition.pdf

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/166/8/1023

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/328/7432/128

I’ve seen posts painted with broad strokes, but your last one almost takes the cake (falling right in with those who wrote about the sky falling at U of T). First of all, you’re right- nothing is ever free in life, is it? I’m glad we all understand here that “free university” means “higher taxes”. In such a scheme, we would have to trust that the government was spending enough of these taxes to keep university of excellent quality, and not wasting money, or funneling undue amounts to certain institutions over others. Or, we could let universities establish their own fee systems- compounded by government subsidies to keep tuitions capped at reasonable levels- and build their credibility based on the type of returns their graduates get on their investments (in the form of number of grads reaching employment after PSE, reputation, donations back to the university, etc.)

Now, addressing other points you brought up. You wrote:
The question is not whether you deserved to go to school because your parents could pay, it is whether you took the spot of someone who was actually more deserving of education because of merit but couldn’t pay the tuition fees or was discouraged because of not wanting to spend their life in debt repayment.

This is silly reasoning, and just plain wrong from a certain angle. Anyone more deserving than me of education because of merit- I assume you meant academic merit- would have been accepted before me, and those with lower marks would have been placed lower on the acceptance bracket. As far as I can remember, no university asks for your statements of financial responsibility until you’ve actually communicated the desire to accept the invitation to attend. And this more deserving person would probably have been offered the same full-tuition scholarship I was offered by the university, owing to his/her deserving stature. Don’t confuse being accepted into university with being able to pay for it, unless you back your argument up a few years and address the growing failure of publicly-funded schools in poor neighbourhoods (in that discussion, I think we’d actually find common ground). And don’t give me the “discouraged against applying” round. Loads of unclaimed scholarship dollars languish in universities, non-profit groups, and special-interest groups year after year because the kids (and their parents) don’t have the good sense to seek them out and apply for them.

You also wrote:

Your privileged position of not seeing education as a right exposes your contempt for a just and fair system where people have to compete on a level playing field. Like most right-wing ideologues you do not want to compete in a fair system and you use your privilege to try to exclude those more deserving and better based on anything other than your parent’s wealth.

Whoa, friend. Never did I say “education” shouldn’t be free- I fully support free, level playing fields in primary and secondary education, and think we should be getting more from it. I just happen to think there’s no such thing as free post-secondary education, and that letting universities establish their own tuition schemes (with expenses shared by governments) allows for people to more wisely choose how they spend their money rather than what they give to the government at tax time. Picture this scenario: in the tuition-free scheme, a middle-class family will have a portion of its income go to funding free PSE. Suppose their son or daughter decides not to go to university, but instead to develop a different trade, perhaps a family business. Does the family not then have grounds to ask the government for a refund? Or should they simply be content knowing their dollars went to pay for the kid next door’s engineering degree (all six years of it), oh and by the way, he’s decided to work in the States, where he won’t be taxed as much? Hardly a balanced, level field, if you ask me. Just because we pay for the possibility for EVERYONE to go to college does not mean the money will get deservingly spent. If we’re arguing for more tax dollars to be spent on education, leave the universities as they stand, and pump the cash into more federally-funded day care centers, as well as smaller, more enriching, and well-staffed public high schools with superbly paid teachers.

Your second (entirely false) statement does little more than expose your own classism. I doubt you know a lot of right-wing ideologues personally, let enough well enough to assess the nature of their competitive personalities. Take me very seriously on this: I am perfectly happy to compete on any field, even better if it’s fair and level, against those poorer or richer than me (the more, the merrier), and have my performance judged entirely on my effort. If you want evidence, check how long I’ve stuck with this thread.

See here, Ahab: Students themselves are a considerable factor in their being empty-pocketed come uni time (i’m talking undergrad studies, here). I spent two months on the road last fall giving scholarship workshops to Grade 12 and 11 students and their parents on how to look for and apply for scholarships. You wouldn’t believe the dumbfoundedness from students and parents alike when I tell them that, every year, hundreds of thousands of dollars of scholarship funds aren’t given out because - wait for it - nobody bothers to apply for them. And when I ask those same grade 12 students how much time they’ve invested to date in researching and applying for scholarships - because ideally students should start looking in grade 10 so they can earmark the ones they qualify for and start getting their portfolios ready - the reaction once again is largely the same: “Um, I haven’t. Before the end of the school year, I guess.” (Which is precisely why they DON’T deserve to go to uni) Or this one, which takes the cake: “Um, I just figured I’d get a loan.” Ironically, the latter travesty serves up a common point on which you and I agree: Students are effin’ lazy and apathetic when it comes to their uni education. Though I’ll lay it on the table right now that it’s because they (and their parents) would rather wail at government about tuition fees than focus their time and effort on self-sufficiency. The amount of scholarship money out there for students of financial need, women (good god, two years ago U of M gave an automatic $3000 scholarship to first-year female engineering students as an incentive for more women to enroll in engineering. Just for enrolling!!), first nations kids, kids who volunteer, kids with disabilities, is so staggering it makes me want to spit every time I hear yet another student whine about his/her student loan coming late.

My point here is that there’s often a direct correlation between how much time a high school student (and his/her parents) is willing to invest in searching and applying for scholarships – and for that matter, into saving for uni in general - and how much money they’re likely to have earned by the time September of first year uni comes around. One thing that gets my blood boiling is hearing kids like my Grade 11 nephew say he’ll “just get a loan” to go to university. He’s had a good part-time job since last fall, yet as of this moment that disposable income goes toward his 5 Friends plan, iPod downloads and game rentals. His mom, instead of insisting that no less than 70% of of that income go straight into a university savings account, prefers the picketing approach of complainign about tuition fees.

The question is not whether you deserved to go to school because your parents could pay, it is whether you took the spot of someone who was actually more deserving of education because of merit but couldn’t pay the tuition fees or was discouraged because of not wanting to spend their life in debt repayment.

Your privileged position of not seeing education as a right exposes your contempt for a just and fair system where people have to compete on a level playing field. Like most right-wing ideologues you do not want to compete in a fair system and you use your privilege to try to exclude those more deserving and better based on anything other than your parent’s wealth.

There are a limited number of positions in University and every time tuition goes up it excludes another group of deserving and bright people from the less fortunate end from going to school and lets people like yourself get in instead.

All the research shows this. All the economic models say the same thing. If you think that merit should be the only deciding factor in getting advanced education then you have to go with a system of zero tuition fees. Even a graded or get a break on tuition if you are poor doesn’t cut it because of the complex nature of measuring wealth and ability to spend and because undeserving well-off people get student loans and invest them and actually make money while they go to school.

Oh, and your nonsensical statements about the US and India just go to show that you have no understanding of these things. Education in the US is expensive to the point of excluding all except the most exceptional of the working class in the US, not only at the PSE level but also at primary and secondary level. There is no university system for the poor and working class in the US but there are two tiers (one for the rich and one for the debt-ridden middle class) for everyone else.

There is no question that there are great Universities in the US but if you think that they are great because they exclude the deserving poor from attending because they have to let dunces like Bush get “gentleman C’s” all the way through university, you just may be one of those people who did not deserve that expensive education.

Also, India is a “developing” nation with a limited tax base for things like PSE and it still has to keep tuition low (your friend is not obviously not from Karala Province as tuition is lower than $1000 a year) or students go on massive protests like the one in 2002. It is student action like the one above that keeps governments like in India scared enough to make PSE access a priority.

Standard of living has nothing to do with the economics of PSE tuition fees or tuition in New Brunswick wouldn’t be the second highest in the country. PSE tuition is dependent on a policy choice, either the government wants to have a merit based system or it wants to let its buddies from the higher classes have their children have access over more deserving people.

Hearing this, I couldn’t help but ask myself if the fees at Canadian unversities- as they are, adjusted for our comparatively higher standard of living- aren’t so bad after all. Tuitions across the country range from $1,917 (Quebec, 2006) to the highest rates in Nova Scotia ($6,500 in 2006). Don’t forget, higher taxes in Quebec account for those lower fees; any way you slice it, someone somewhere is footing the bill.

I also asked myself: as I was lucky enough to have parents who could afford to pay for my undergraduate education, why should someone like me have been allowed to benefit from free education, had it been available? Wouldn’t the funding that would have put my relatively comfortable behind through school have been better used creating bursaries for those most in need?

Considering the price tag of unversities in the States (which, as a whole, are still the best in the world), I think Canadians get pretty good bang for their buck. What stands here is a philosophical difference between how we view unversity access: most here see it as a right. I don’t- I see it as the right investment, one that should be made more readily available only to those most in need.

To the other Alex: add some perspective to your woe-is-me parade. First of all, so you have to compete against other students, from all backgrounds, for jobs- since when is that news?

Perspective number two: any employer who WOULDN’T hire you- a bust-his-ass student who held down 25+ hours of work a week AND completed an undergrad with labs- is an idiot. Perhaps I’m ignoring the nature of hiring in the science field, where actual marks may matter more than actual work skills and employment acumen- but I doubt your working experience ever put you at a disadvantage (I argue it does the contrary).

Perspective number three: Based on my husband’s experience (we paid for his Masters- supplemented by loans and scholarships), more and more Masters programs are seeking out students who have actually accumulated work experience after their undergrads. This preference ends up attracting a more serious, high-quality and diverse student body, which increases the university’s profile. So while it might be nice for everyone to have the option to faff around uni for years while they’re making up their minds, it’s simply still a waste of money compared to asking adults to grow up and get cracking.

You asked me to define what I think a “reasonable” tuition would look like. It’s hard to put it into dollar numbers, because the demands of the economy would play into it- but I think governments, unversities and students should all split the costs, and that governments should offer loans that are easy to access and do not require a firstborn to pay off. I would even support the idea of making the first two years of unversity free- so that those who truly do want higher education are motivated to stick to it and finish in such a time frame that does not end up costing taxpayers undue amounts.

Some of the most competitive employees I know- including members of my own family- don’t have Masters, either. I was lucky enough to come from a modest background with parents who saved for my education, but not without limits. I got in and out in four years- anything beyond that I was expected to cover myself (something I completely agree with). I happen to believe my own work ethic and personal financial investment to further certification has contributed to my success; but once you calculate exactly how much my (non-existant) government lobbying (I don’t have time for that crap, I work) and lofty lifestyle is costing you directly, please, by all means, send me the bill.

“However, the Chinese and Indians- with their very different government systems- routinely churn out legions of highly-competitive workers from their free (China) and near-free (India) universities.”

I don’t know about India, but I’ve been living and teaching English in China for a while now, and I can guarantee you, of the dozen universities where I’ve taught at various times, not one of them has been free. The cheapest seems to cost about 4000 RMB, but maybe I haven’t seen any of these free universities. Hell, a couple of other foreign teachers and I pooled our cash together, and doled out three different one year tuition “scholarships”, which was just us handing money to certain students. They were unable to afford the next year of tuition, which says to me that it isn’t free.

“in countries where both private, tuition-based universities and near-tuition-free institutions exist (Brazil, the UK, France, and a host of others), guess which ones end up being the most exclusive? The free ones (so much for accessibility for the average Joe). Neither does this mean the most financially needy can access these free schools; in Brazil, rich families are known to pay for their children’s entrance to a private school in order to eventually gain entrance to the free exclusive ones”

Thank you so much; this is a great argument on why we should not have private and public schools, but should have public education for everybody. Let’s use our resources to ensure that everybody can have a quality education, not just the rich. Clearly the mixed public and private system doesn’t work.

“I support reasonable tuitions at universities, to keep them competitive yet accessible”

Define reasonable. I can reason that providing free post-secondary education benefits all of society and the rewards will be worth the investment. Who exactly would publicly funded, zero-tuition Canadian universities be competing with?

“It’s a pedestrian articulation of an opinion compared to the manifestos written by some here; but I feel much more comfortable lobbying it”

Well, that exactly what we children of the working poor are here for; to make YOU feel more comfortable while you comfortably lobby government and make connections that will secure a comfortable career for you.

“A funny thing happened tonight as I followed Adam’s advice to “get a grip” and seek out You Tube footage of the damage (and I use that term lightly) that went down at U of T when a few protesters decided to have themselves a sit-down in front of a prof’s door. The funny thing was that- just as I opened the link and began viewing the footage, my own three-year-old son walked into the room, threw himself on the floor and began wailing and writhing because I had turned the TV off. And as the two cacophonies mounted in volume, I realized that I couldn’t tell the difference between a bunch of students wailing at police and a three-year-old throwing a spectacular tantrum. I mean, the two sounds were practically indistinguishable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EchZt44_e8g&feature=related

Nor was my reaction to my son’s tantrum much different from that of the officers who arrived at the scene at UofT: I picked him up, moved him a few feet to his room (much like the cops cleared the way for profs to exit their office- OK, now I believe they were actually summoned to the scene), and stood back to think, “I could be catching the game on TV instead of listening to this crap.”

What I didn’t find in my search for the aforementioned “grip” was ANY evidence of police escalation and brutality. And for all the dramatic words written here- I’m talking to you, Alex, Mike, and Adam- insisting that these poor students fell victim to yet another violent quashing of the movement by the Man- I see nothing more than the same type of histrionic artifice and exaggeration created by the students at the scene, specifically to prop a stance on a cause that was either poorly organized, or just poorly thought-out to begin with.

What’s my point here? It ties directly in with the moanings here about the shortcomings of the student movement in general; how the absence of grass-roots organization, mobilization, and support from the larger (presumably unionized) working force have supposedly contributed to the stagnation of the movement. Friends, if this is what the student movement has become- a group of limp-bodied drama students who caterwaul at the mere arrival of law enforcement (let’s not forget, WHEN THEY THEMSELVES HAVE BARRICADED PROFS IN THEIR OFFICE- how’s that anything like a peaceful, meaningful sit-in?), then you may as well take out your nails and hammers now, the coffin’s coming right up. Such antics are very hard to separate from reasonable demands made by level-headed, reasonable people, and obscure the reasonable nature of those demands- a pause in fee hikes to examine alternative ways to make university more accessible.

It’s taken me this long to get to my position on the role of tuition and access to higher education. My own un-academic, anecdotal view is ambivalent at best. In countries where university education has historically been free- Germany, Malta- students have been known to kick around at uni for years while the government (and the taxpayers) foot the bill for some students’ indecisiveness. Moreover, in countries where both private, tuition-based universities and near-tuition-free institutions exist (Brazil, the UK, France, and a host of others), guess which ones end up being the most exclusive? The free ones (so much for accessibility for the average Joe). Neither does this mean the most financially needy can access these free schools; in Brazil, rich families are known to pay for their children’s entrance to a private school in order to eventually gain entrance to the free exclusive ones. However, the Chinese and Indians- with their very different government systems- routinely churn out legions of highly-competitive workers from their free (China) and near-free (India) universities. Such is reality.

Given the things I know and have mentioned above, I support reasonable tuitions at universities, to keep them competitive yet accessible, but I also support greater government initiative in providing low-interest loans and encouraging universities to increase the amounts of their endowments allocated to scholarships. It’s a pedestrian articulation of an opinion compared to the manifestos written by some here; but I feel much more comfortable lobbying it considering I do it free of any exaggeration.”