Students continue to protest
Thursday night’s student demo remained peaceful as Mayor Tremblay pleaded for a resolution to the standoff and the media have found both restaurateurs and hoteliers to echo the same sentiment. Even some of the students have suggested bringing in a mediator but Quebec shot the idea down.
Rima Elkouri deplores the ongoing damage and notes it’s only good luck nobody has been badly hurt or killed yet. Even the Gazette allows itself some critical thought about how allowing this situation to drag on may be part of Jean Charest’s long-term plans for re-election.
The CBC asks what gives Quebec students different expectations from those in the rest of Canada.
Hamza 09:44 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
Uh about that ‘sober’ CBC article, they missed the whole point about how Quebec’s public and corporate worlds are wholly corrupt, have been bleeding billions of dollars from already stressed taxpayers, and how it is *immoral* (yes morality falls into this issue) to ask one of the poorest slices of our population to cough up 75% more (plus interest) for one of the only pathways to class mobility left to the average Quebecer.
qatzelok 10:15 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
“one of the only pathways to class mobility left to the average Quebecer.”
Not only class mobility, but just as importantly, social awareness. Social awareness (understanding the power abuses inherent in a class-based system) is what is most needed from our universities. Everyone who attends walks away with a bit more of this than they had before they went.
Kate 10:22 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
Is it not conceivable that holding back class mobility and reducing social awareness wouldn’t displease politicians one tiny bit?
Quebec is such an interesting case. Until the 1960s the Catholic Church kept a lid on the place, then linguistic nationalism took over some of people’s willingness to hold back their personal ambitions and reduce their involvement in the wider world on the promise of a better life (once it was after death, then it was in an independent Quebec). Now we’re all on the internet and while nationalism is still alive its flame is not the big passionate bonfire it once was. How are you going to hold them down now?
Tax them hard, beat them with sticks, make it more difficult to cast off the “brand on the tongue” of growing up speaking bad joual, cut back on Radio-Canada so there’s less motivation to listen to people speaking standard French, push them back into the woods and the wilderness and make them hew wood, draw water and dig in the ground for your corporate masters. What do you think?
mdblog 10:32 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
Kate, fantastic point. I have similar suspicions but you’ve expressed them much more clearly than I ever could.
For my part, what would be nice is if the students would articulate “why” they need tuitions kept down. If there is a reasonable argument to be made for this, I think that the public (who is being asked to pay for this) should be made aware of it.
If all the students are saying is “we can’t afford the increase” then it opens to door to taxpayers/voters making the same argument (i.e. we can’t afford NOT to raise tuitions), doesn’t it?
Tux 10:38 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
And I was having such a nice Friday too… the idea that politicians would purposely raise the bar on access to education… it boggles the mind. How about… we accept the tuition hike but require that all course materials created thereafter be published freely online so that people can study-along-at-home at no cost to them, followed by taking an exam to earn their diplomas..? It cuts costs and opens up higher education to more people…
Susana Machado 12:15 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
Ok, I’ll bite… *puts on Concordia student hat*
First, I’d like to say that I am kind of in a hurry here but my argument might not be as thought through as I’d like.
Second, “The Students” is something that does not exist. We are not a monolithic group and some of us are busy with classes and exams to make our voices really heard.
Third, It is not because I am not on strike and have decided not to take part in the protests that I am in, any shape or form, for the hikes. There has been in the media an automatic association that protestors are against the hikes and those that staid in classe are for them. Makes me want to yell at someone when I hear that.
Now, why am I against the hikes? I can only speak for myself so here it goes: Stop wasting my money! Personally, I could afford the hike. I know that not everybody could, but, selfishly, I can. Does not mean I want *them* to keep wasting my money. I don’t want them to have three quarters of a million dollars in a golden parachute, I don’t want them to drop hundreds on millions of dollars downt he drain that is Îlot Voyageur, I don’t want the Dean of McGill to spend nearly 10K in a first class ticket to Brasil ( really? Business was no enough? You needed first? WHy not pay the different from your own pocket! ). I don’t want the UQAM/TR/S to spend 200 million dollars per year in publicity and them have all of them tell ME that there is not enough money to teach. Put your house in order, stop wasting money left and right and paying people more than they are worth (I am talking administrators here, I don’t think teachers are overpaid), stop WASTING. If the education system was in order and there wasn’t millions of dollars going down the drain every year, I would gladly pay my share of the tuition hikes. Even pay more than my share. Pay whatever I can afford to get an education if it meant people who could afford less could also get their education. But as it is? No way! These hikes just mean that there will be more wasted money, more people getting nice financial cushions, more stupid projects that aren’t properly studied nor executed. There will be ZERO increase in the quality of the education I will be getting because this hike is not to benefit me, it is to benefit the corrupted administrations that are endemic at every level in the Education department.
So there, this is my selfish opinion. Then you can add that it is not fair and that the poorest students won’t be able to afford it and that it will prevent social mobility, etc, etc. These arguments are not wrong, per se, but they are not my main argument. That is why the whole “They can afford it, they just need not to buy the latest iPad or buy 6$ coffees” argument makes me want to smack people… it is not because I can afford it that I want to waste my money. I could probably afford to cut a 20$ in pieces every week and wash it down the drain. Does not mean I want to!
I hope I did not come across as too belligerent, I try to be respectful of other people’s opinions and if you felt I was yelling at any of you, my mistake, it was not the case.
And now… to prepare for my summer semester that starts Monday…
*gets off the soap box*
Matt 13:33 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
@Susana: Wow. Thanks. I think that puts how I feel into words.
Kevin 16:08 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
How is it raising the bar on education if the government increases bursaries and scholarships for poor students?
Antonio 21:03 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
A law student from Université Laval writes in The Globe and Mail that Numbers aren’t with students – and Quebec shouldn’t be either.
ant6n 22:00 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
What numbers. He says only 35% of the students are on strike, and then says that only 20% of students actually support the strikes as a whole – basically assuming that all faculties that are not on strike unanimously voted against them, but all faculties that are on strike only got barely more than half support for them.
Then he makes big words about economics and debt and whatnot, ignoring that the tuition hikes are nearly negligible from a budget point of view; conveniently he has no numbers. One number – reducing hike down to weekly numbers: great! Did you know that if you make a million a year, you make less than 2$ per Minute. That’s only like an expensive phone call!
The rest is just the typical anti arts rants that’s basically unrelated to the tuition issue itself. Ending with cheers for the government.
Man, you sould get an arts degree, maybe then you’ll be able to analyze this rant a bit more critically. Or you should get a real degree, like a math degree, which would give you the ability to analyze the lacking numbers a bit better.
Kevin 23:05 on 2012/04/27 Permalink
@ant6n
I’ve argued part of that before: the goal isn’t to bankrupt (would be) students; it’s to get students who are going to be earning a hell of a lot more money after graduation to pay a more equitable share of the costs upfront, and to divert more people into higher paying fields.
If society is picking up 80-90% of the tab, why shouldn’t it have a say in what people study?
Antonio 06:37 on 2012/04/28 Permalink
@Kevin: Thank you for being another voice of reason.
@ant6n: I think “Sandy” is a girl’s name and therefore the pronoun you ought to be using is “she,” not “he.”
Antonio 06:45 on 2012/04/28 Permalink
@ant6n: I have an arts degree, and two others. I see your arts degree, if you have one, hasn’t allowed you to move beyond the sexist presumption that an author is male when she is actually female. You only needed to look at the author’s name, but your arts degree hasn’t taught you to look that closely. Speaks volumes about the rigour with which you approach things in general. I’d say none. Pseudo-leftist platitudes and truisms do not equal intellectual rigour, hate to break it to you. I wish you had more to show for your degree, assuming you have one, because I did help pay for it to the tune of 89% or so.
ant6n 08:41 on 2012/04/28 Permalink
Well, Sandy is a girl’s or a boy’s name; and by reading the text and not the name of the author I’m naturally sexist; which naturally means that my analysis of the article is completely invalid. Talk about strawman argument.
Please point out the “Pseudo-leftist platitudes” and “truisms” in my writing. I try to argue in numbers, and dislike irrelevant arguments; you just elevate any rant against students to “reason” and in this case pretend they have the numbers to show for it, when they actually don’t.
ant6n 08:44 on 2012/04/28 Permalink
@Kevin
Paying tuition via taxation is the most progressive way to finance education. It exactly does what you say – have people who earn a hell of a lot more money pay a much larger contribution of their education through taxes. As opposed to user fees for everyone, which are largely regressive.
Antonio 10:48 on 2012/04/28 Permalink
@ant6n: I don’t actually think you’re sexist; I do think you lack rigour. That was my point. Feigning indignation at your “sexism” was rhetorical flourish to demonstrate that you didn’t even bother to closely read and address the item in question and that your “dismissal” of it is a joke.
ant6n 11:12 on 2012/04/28 Permalink
Right. So rather than addressing whatever point I was trying to make, you just used a strawman as a rethorical device.
Antonio 15:40 on 2012/04/28 Permalink
@ant6n: no, sir, I was simply calling you on the straw man because it was by way of the straw man fallacy that you “refuted” Sandy’s commentary without ever actually addressing it. Making reference to the “sexist presumption” that the author is male is not straw man. It’s an ad hominem, perhaps (which isn’t always a fallacy), but not a straw man.
Antonio 18:23 on 2012/04/28 Permalink
Another interesting item on tuition and our sense of entitlement; this time the perspective is that of a foreign student writing in the McGill Daily.