Student struggle continues
Student action continues Thursday with a blockade at Concordia and a student win declared in Valleyfield where the CEGEP cancelled classes after an administrative ultimatum collapsed.
We’ve had more scraps on this blog over the student issue than over most topics, but something crossed my mind today that I haven’t seen mentioned. The students demonstrating now are not going to suffer most from the five-year cumulative tuition increase. They’re fighting for a principle, rather than for their own pockets. That’s one thing.
But Jean Charest is ignoring another point, which is that they are fighting for Quebec. They’re hoping to make Quebec a better place by making education more accessible in the future. These students aren’t planning to get a “cheap” education then leave for greener pastures and higher salaries elsewhere. They’re doing this because they’re committed to Quebec. That’s not something he should sell cheap.
Jean Charest is betting on the Plan Nord and the old image of jolly French-Canadians hewing wood and drawing water and providing raw materials for other people to do things with, but the students are aware that in a knowledge economy you simply can’t reduce access to education and expect to thrive.
The students, despite being better connected to the rest of the world via the internet than any generation before them, are firmly placing their feet here and risking at least delaying the completion of their own education to make a point.
I don’t think Charest is either quite the villain or the idiot that some do, but I think he’d be wise to ponder what he thinks he knows about the economy and whether someone who’s 60 can ever thoroughly understand the situation of someone who’s 20. He’s got to talk, and he has to begin by acknowledging that the students are trying to push him to do the right thing for Quebec, but I doubt he has the wisdom to do it.
Jack 10:38 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
Well said.
Joey 11:03 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
Jean Charest has probably read the tons of research on access to higher education that almost always concludes that focusing on tuition, and not on removing the informational, academic, motivational and other financial barriers, is a fool’s errand. Equating access with price may ring true, but it’s simply false.
Steph 11:08 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
I wanted to add that the anglophone perspective is skewed by the large presence of out of province students and international students at the English universities. I wouldn’t mind seeing a statistic on what that percentage is vs Quebec residents. This definitly contributes to Concordia’s “business as usual” approach to the strike. I know in the french universities over 90% of the students are Quebec residents which is why the French university students can leave class en mass and the school WILL have to address the strike more seriously.
SMD 11:22 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
Amen, Kate!
Kevin 12:04 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
@Steph Don’t quote me, but it’s about 25% of out-of-province at McGill. About 15% out of country IIRC.
@Kate I think some of the loudest, rowdiest protesters have been CEGEP students who will face a substantial hike by the time they finish their degrees.
That said, FECQ has a poll out today. 47% of respondents support the tuition hike, 41% oppose.
In the grand scheme of things the amount of the tuition hike is small. Tuition in Quebec will still be cheaper than in the rest of the country. And let’s face it: most people get an education in the hopes of having a better life and earning more money in the long run.
Kate 12:23 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
Who knows the facts? The government says “oh, we’re so poor” and gest half the students and more of the general population believing they need future graduates to emerge deeper in debt in order to make ends meet. I don’t know that I believe this. It’s hard not to see it in the current context of the old impoverishing the young, the rich impoverishing the poor, and the banks impoverishing everybody. Quebec hands out lavish sums to any corporation willing to set up a business here. Universities mismanage their funds and get bailed out. But the students, who are young enough not to have scarred their consciences with the multiple compromises necessary to reach middle age, can see that there are better ways to frame the discourse and manage the money.
Christian 12:58 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
@Kevin: I’d think that most people get an education to ensure a source of income or at least ensure that they have a place in society. I’ve never thought that more education would lead to more money. If anything, pursuing a career into academia certainly leads to less money ;-).
@Steph: I’ve always found it unfortunate that “droits de scolarite” gets distilled to “tuition” in English. Shorthand one might say, but one refers to a right whereas the other definitely refers to a privilege. At some point, with enough hikes, “droits” will become “frais”. Perhaps unrelated, but it happens to fall in line with your comments about how the franco/anglo universities are currently reacting to the debate.
Steph 12:59 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
A least the government isn’t saying the fee increase is to “increase the quality of education” anymore.
joe 13:04 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
if low tuition = more students, then something is wrong in Quebec as its student population is no different than elsewhere. i wish someone here would explain that one.
Antonio 19:06 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
Amen, Joey and joe.
Alex L 20:27 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
@Joe
Please, be more critique than the government tells you too. Quebec has Cégeps, Canada only has universities.
If you take the government’s numbers, accessibility to higher education is about the same everywhere if compared to Quebec. Then if you suddenly realize that Quebec has Cégeps, that are free of tuition and that correspond to the first year of an undergrad diploma, then the numbers change and you get way better accessibility here than in most places.
You simply just can’t compare two different education systems just like that.
Cheers,
joe 22:39 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
@Alex
CEGEP education does not correspond to the first year of an undergrad diploma. It is a colossal waste of time, a failed expriment whose diploma isn’t truly recognized as anything elsewhere in the world, no matter how hard you try.
Alex L 23:28 on 2012/04/12 Permalink
Wow, if that’s an argument, no wonder we have that kind of government elected. I won’t waste my time on that.
ant6n 07:26 on 2012/04/13 Permalink
@joe
fact: CEGEP is recognized as the first year of a four-year undergraduate program in Quebec, also generally referred to as the freshman year (or u0).
Jonathan Evans 11:03 on 2012/04/13 Permalink
I agree that we live in a world with a knowledge economy, but that does not equate to a university degree economy. We do need to subsidize our future biologists, chemists, engineers, et al, but what we do not need are any more subsidIzed students coming out of school with English or philosophy degrees. I am not saying that that type of knowledge is useless, what I am saying is that it does not have the benefit on society that some people seem to believe it does.
We have made a university degree too important, even when it is sometimes quite frankly meaningless. I have many friends who are in school in fine arts or liberal arts programs and their lax attitude towards their schooling as well as their professors similar attitude towards them indicates that these programs are more than degree farms rather than true edifices of education and learning.
If people want to protest something meaningful they should fight for a change in the meaning and value a degree from one of these institutions has in our society. But that would probably be too hard.