CLASSE proposes taxing the banks
CLASSE is proposing taxing the banks to pay for free tuition.
Piece from CP analyzes the actual numbers about tuition hikes and their potential effects, finding – as many articles have – that there are many socioeconomic variables that make it difficult to produce any firm statements on either side of the spectrum of opinion.
The Globe & Mail has a piece defending young people’s grievances – the boomers may remember the phrase “generation gap” but the gap the present generation sees is an economic one, not the one of attitudes that faced the hippies.
And what of the people who are neither boomers nor fresh-faced kids, Coupland’s classic Generation X, who get squeezed from both sides?
Kevin 10:37 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Us Gen Xers went to school paying about $300 less than tuition is now (while earning under $6 an hour) then moved to where we could find a job, then came back when the government was so desperate for skilled workers it offered us 5 years with reduced income taxes.
And now we wondering why people can’t be bothered to save $50 a paycheque for their own education.
PaoloP 10:37 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
“And what of the people who are neither boomers nor fresh-faced kids, Coupland’s classic Generation X, who get squeezed from both sides?”
THANK YOU!
Kevin 10:44 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Rather, for their ‘children’s’ education. Hasty typing there.
Kate 10:52 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Actually, Kevin, you’re right. A lot of people are paying for education from their own paycheque. Not everyone gets paid for by their family.
Anyway, think of it this way: Quebec needs a more educated populace. We’re facing rough times, competition from places where people can live much more cheaply than here, so we need to have knowledge, confidence and attitude to make this place thrive.
Support the students. They’re the ones who’ll be paying for your old age pension.
Antonio 12:05 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
@Kate: they won’t be able to pay our old age pension if they are underemployed serving up lattes at Starbucks or making proposals to their creditors to avoid bankruptcy like Sophie in the Raymond Chabot advert who has an MA but couldn’t find a job “in her field.” These are caricatures but you get the idea.
If government/taxpayers are to completely subsidize post-secondary education then goverment/taxpayers should get to call the shots to some extent and divert people away from the fields where there is a glut of graduates and low job prospects and towards fields where people can be gainfully employed and help get us out of the “rough times,” which you acknowledge.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too…beggars can’t be choosers, etc., etc.
Hamza 14:28 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Stephen Harper and the rather successful (as-of-late) right-wing movement in Canada want us all to believe that we are islands . We must only care for ourselves, our huge suburban homes and our paycheque’s bottom line.
Obviously, because if the rich suburbanites can live on their own, why can’t the rest of us unwashed commies? Because it’s not like the conservatives ever had to use the roads, Medicare, public schools, public transit, tax benefits, public daycare, public services, highways (etc.)
In Quebec, unlike say, suburban Ontario or Alberta, we haven’t forgotten that we’re all in this together. So let’s stay together (crooned in a smoothly Obamaesque manner).
maureen 17:39 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Honestly, now they want everything for free. These students lose more of the little support they had every hour. The word “student” has become a dirty word that commands no respect amongst the tax paying citizens in this province. How many “students” are actually protesting anyway? Seems to be a bit of a lark for many of the ones mucking about downtown in the evenings.
I would also like to know why no one seems to be talking about how it is business as usual at all the english educational institutes. Too much of a hot potato?
Kate 18:25 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Maureen, I can’t do better than what Hamza wrote right above you, and ask you to have a ponder of it.
Education isn’t a toy, a thing a spoiled child wants for free. Everyone who is lifted out of ignorance is a benefit to the society around them.
That also applies to your idée fixe about education, Antonio. Most people who come out of school with general arts degrees don’t necessarily find themselves five years later working in a field directly connected to their studies, but their studies make them more fit to do any kind of work. Why else do you think a degree is a baseline requirement for most jobs, even when you can’t draw a direct line between the activity of the job and the content of most university arts courses?
ant6n 18:59 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
@maureen
English universities probably have too many international students, and the issue doesn’t concern them. Also, there might be some difference between the French and English cultures (anglo saxon protestant hard work and shut up attitude and whatnot). The ROC doesn’t really understand Quebec students, either.
On the other hand, McGill had a 3-day strike(!)
Antonio 20:57 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
@Kate: once again, there is no such thing as a “general arts degree.” There are arts degrees in sociology, anthropology, philosophy, economics, political science, etc., but not one “general arts degree.” The boycotters’ display of immaturity and irresponsibility notwithstanding, university is not high school. University degrees have become “baseline requirements” for most jobs simply because we churn out an overabundance of BA holders. It’s a matter of supply, and there is too much of it. That’s the perverse effect of churning out too many BA’s, i.e. that employers require such degrees for the most menial positions. We have so cheapened the value of the BA that you dare refer to the figment of your imagination which you refer to as a “general arts degree.” Arts degrees are specialized academic training and should only be accessible to highly motivated students who care to become the custodians of that specific body of knowledge.
Ian 21:04 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
@antonio – “general arts degree” is a pretty common term, and for all your faux-outrage, everyone knows that this is not an actual degree. Your dramatic antics are unbecoming of the seriousness you attempt to attribute to your arguments.
@ant6n – “anglo saxon protestant hard work and shut up attitude and whatnot” I’ve seen before yet somehow everyone forgets a mere decade ago Concordia students were the ones in trouble for being “too political”. Your point that most students at Concordia and McGill are international (or out of province) has a lot of bearing here though – it’s hard to get worked up about the future of a province you don’t plan to stay in, where tuitions are already a sweet deal compared to back home. I got degrees from both Concordia and McGill and very few of my alumni that weren’t from here are still here, unless they married a local. But once and for all, let’ s stop calling this an “anglo saxon” thing. Not everyone from outside Quebec is anglo saxon; the whole french vs. english thing has very little traction outside of la belle province to the extent that it’s rarely on anyone’s radar unless specifically talking about Quebec. That the two major english speaking universities have a student population that isn’t from Quebec should hardly be surprising given the quality and affordability of being educated at either institution in a continent of anglos & allophones (a term used only in Quebec) save Quebec and a few small areas throughout Canada.
Kate 23:31 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Antonio, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois of CLASSE is studying for a “Baccalauréat en histoire, culture et société” at UQÀM. Is that not a general enough arts degree to make my point? There are all kinds of programs in liberal arts around the place, both at CEGEP (the Dawson program is well thought of, on the English side) and at university level.
ant6n 00:07 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
@Ian
“it’s hard to get worked up about the future of a province you don’t plan to stay in, where tuitions are already a sweet deal compared to back home.”
Tuition in Canada isn’t cheap. It’s probably more expensive than close to anywhere in the world – except the States, and even then only fancy universities. International tuition is getting close to 20K per year (which is more expensive than State schools in the States). I’d say most international students are willing to pay that because of the prestige of having a North American degree. So international students don’t care about the hikes, because it literally doesn’t concern them – they pay a different rate, and it’s 10 times more. Even worse, the striking Quebec students sometimes say that international students should just pay more to subsidise the locals. Given that we pay so much, and that the rates increase like crazy (doubling like every 7/8 years, or hiking a 1000$ on some years just like that), the sympathy and understanding for local students is low.
Raoul 05:54 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
If education were a right, in law, there would also be responsabilities. Ive never taken a basic law class that didnt put the two together.
If the governments’ going to pay for most or all of someone’s education, its not unreasonable for them to steer students towards professions that will enable them to pay that back in income taxes and hopefully contribute to other peoples’ education in the process.
If everyone were to invoke their right to an education and half of them decided to pursue fields that didnt lead to a decent tax bracket, how could we expect them to support a new generation of students?
We cant make the same mistake as the boomers. They voted themselves more rights than they could afford and we’ll be paying for it long after we’ve buried the last of them.
Kevin 07:52 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
@Kate
No, I meant to write children.
*I* paid my own way through school. My children won’t have to because of a commonplace thing called an RESP.
Simply put, two levels of government are offering free money to anyone with the foresight to set aside some cash.
The only reason parents should not be helping their children get educations is because they are jerks.
And as I’ve said repeatedly — the plan due to be implemented by the government is a progressive plan that provides free tuition for anyone earning under $65,000 a year. Really poor people will actually get *paid* to go to school.
Those people marching in the streets are elitists who want to make sure rich people don’t have to pay for their education.
ant6n 08:51 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
@Kevin
Poor people get support from the government to pay their studies, but aren’t those mostly loans?
Kate 09:51 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
Kevin: and if parents don’t pay because they can’t, or because they have other reasons (religion is one that comes to mind) not to wish to see their kids get a formal education?
Chris 19:10 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
Kevin, you payed your way through school? Elementary and secondary included? Or did you leech off us taxpayers for that?
Kevin 10:16 on 2012/05/05 Permalink
@ant6n
The plan offered by Charest and Beauchamp last Friday (the one rejected by CLASSE/FEUQ/FECQ) actually pays poor people and their families to go to school. Substantial bursaries and tax credits, then loans (Luc Godbout of University of Sherbrooke has explained this very well in several appearances on Rad-Can, and Thursday in a lecture at CEGEP Sherbrooke that convinced those students to end their boycott.)
If it had been in place when I was a student I’d have actually been making money by being in class. Not just offsetting my tuition fees — but paying my tuition and living expenses as well. So I may not have had to put up with cockroaches :/
@Kate
I don’t see what religion has to do with this. If your parents refuse to let you live at home and go to school, you do what I did — save your coin, move out, bust your ass. Except now you’ll be in better financial shape.
@Chris Taxpayers who cannot spell the word “paid” and think this debate is about elementary and secondary school education are not paying any attention. Crawl back under your rock, or start reading and educate yourself.
Chris 20:32 on 2012/05/05 Permalink
Kevin, I think my English is pretty good for my second language. But thanks for reminding me how silly ad hominem attacks are.