Student groups ask for moratorium
Student groups are asking for a two-year moratorium not just on tuition hikes but also on all university spending. They envision an Estates-General on the state of Quebec’s universities and their finances. Line Beauchamp says she’s disappointed.
Josh 17:05 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
Genuine question: What does everyone suppose is the goal of the constant protests? What does it accomplish to protest again and again and again, as has been happening? To change minds? To bring the government down?
I get one protest about something. Or a handful of protests about something. Or if we’re talking Arab Spring or Tienanmen, I get one, prolonged protest. But at this point, in the minds of those protesting, what is the best-case scenario for the one that’s going on right now?
Anto 18:11 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
@Josh: To get people talking about these issues? To shake the population from the state of torpor in which they’ve been living for a couple of decades and have them wonder how is the government managing our education system (and our money and natural resources while we’re at it)? To have people take action and realize democracy doesn’t only happen once every four years?
Anyway that’s my take on it.
Josh 18:14 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
Fair enough Anto, but I think that the vast majority of people that the protesters would want to reach are not going to get engaged by these protests.
Patrick C. 18:16 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
Have you found much comment on the language divide here as regards the strike? On a recent visit to Montreal, my impression was that students at the English universities were mostly going to class.
A second topic I have not seen discussed: what is supposed to be the responsibility of (middle and upper class) parents to help pay their kids’ fees?
Third: some of the commenters on this blog don’t seem to realize that (as Ian McDonald has pointed out) in real terms tuition fees are lower now than were for those of us who went to McGill in the 1960s.
Antonio 18:23 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
Posted this in an older thread but it’s a Margaret Wente opinion published today in The Globe and Mail. Très à propos, as they say.
Kate 18:41 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
And some à propos thoughts on that Wente column.
Spock 18:54 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
Patrick – AMEN
Ian 19:21 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
Ian McDonald has been a conservative shill since he worked for Mulroney. Why are we so excited that Quebec’s tuitions will still be low? Shouldn’t we be more excited about keeping that advantage than selling it for flash-in-the-pan political capital? I swear it’s like there’s no values left in this province but profit and grandstanding. Wente’s overgeneralizations don’t even bear the dignity of taking seriously enough to refute.
Anto 19:24 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
@Patrick: I can’t speak for everyone, but my problem with the hike is where it comes from: a completely corrupt government that’s been acting in self interest for years, giving away our resources, stripping our institutions for parts and reaping the profits in their second jobs. To get students to pay to balance their checkbook is adding insult to injury, and I for one don’t want to let them get away with it.
Antonio 19:30 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
@Kate: that was a superbly written diatribe. It’s the kind of prose that’s so stylish, it’s a pleasure to simply read. I smiled as I made my way through it.
That said, his self-admitted underemployment in spite of all the effort and resources that society has put into his education is a testament to his self-indulgence. His position that university has made him a better person and a better citizen (better than who? the poor slobs who never went to university, are gainfully employed and paid his way through school) is a testament to his conceit and elitism.
Anto 19:33 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
@Antonio: Better than Margaret Wente, as far as I’m concerned :)
qatzelok 19:49 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
Antonio is correct. I was the only sibling in my family to attend university, and my brothers and sisters own way nicer things than I do. They have big cars (I have a bicycle), they have large suburban houses on huge lots (I share an apartment), and they consume a lot more resources than I do – and work a lot more than I do.
Perhaps we’d all be better off being consumer-drones working in mines, spending our free time in malls, and not understanding what could possibly be wrong with this.
Antonio 20:00 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
@qatzelok: no, I must concede that you’re correct. We need more and more people “understanding” what’s “wrong” with it all and relishing the sense of self-satisfaction with that profound understanding. We don’t actually need people doing all the mundane things pertaining to human economics. I get the distinct feeling from you that anything to do with economics is simply wrong.
ant6n 23:33 on 2012/05/01 Permalink
@Patrick
“Third: some of the commenters on this blog don’t seem to realize that (as Ian McDonald has pointed out) in real terms tuition fees are lower now than were for those of us who went to McGill in the 1960s.”
I think I’ve gone through the numbers multiple times on this blog – the tuition is higher including inflation than it was just before the tuition freeze in 1994. Why would you compare tuition now to the 60ies, but not to the 90ies? Do we ever want to go back to the 60ies on any policy issue (like civil rights, or social programs, taxes)? So why on tuition?
montrealfilmguy 01:29 on 2012/05/02 Permalink
And to the haters like Martineau who keep using the old fallacy about it only 50 little
pennies or 89 or 73 pennies per day,try not to forget this argument works both ways.
Its only 50 little pennies for the goverment also.
PaoloP 08:03 on 2012/05/02 Permalink
Spry’s blog post has some good points re: Wente’s column, but he’s completely out to lunch when he says:
“The misuse and misappropriation of budgets in universities is akin to fraud. The amount of pseudo-embezzlement, side deals, overpaid tenured profs, and creative spending is almost as offensive as Wente’s argument.”
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Quebec universities are *underfunded* at the operational level. The waste and financial misconduct is happening in the upper bureaucratic spheres that are often quite out of touch with academia. I work at the operational level in a university as does my wife, and I can tell you first-hand that it’s pretty desperate. Staff are being cut, classrooms are falling apart, class sizes are getting bigger, library journal subscriptions are getting cut, etc. And salaries for tenured profs are *not* out of line given how long they have stayed in school before earning a salary. If Spry’s logic was followed as a guide for cutting university funding, the people who would suffer the most would be the students. Do you really want them to be taught by TAs and part-timers in decrepit classrooms? That’s where we’re going.
The problem with our universities is their corporatization, and the concomitant disconnect between upper administration and academia. The troughs have been created at the top.
qatzelok 08:29 on 2012/05/02 Permalink
@ Antonio: “We don’t actually need people doing all the mundane things pertaining to human economics.”
Probably three quarters of our production/consumption is useless or harmful. Are you arguing that the way we as a society currently consume is healthy? The sticking parents into cubicles for 40 hours a week is the best way to prepare future generations? That a government that cuts deals with mafia is good governance? That we can trust this mafia-tyranny combination to give us a good education?
Is climate change good for us? What about all our wars for resources in the Middle East? Is this healthy human economic activity?