Please, a little more substance to the tuition freeze debate
Troy Stozek Volunteer Staff
Calling the media on its errors is often as easy as hunting cattle. But a recent series of front-page news stories related to the tuition fee freeze, blaming not only government but students for our tattered universities, is completely unwarranted. It makes me want to point the finger right back, but perhaps with a little more substance in the hand that wields it.
There is no doubt that our universities are starved for cash. But to blame the tuition freeze policy or the student proponents of it for this reality is unreasonable. If any finger pointing should be done regarding the financial shortcomings of our universities, it should be directed at both the provincial and federal governments for their failed promises towards post-secondary education and the myriad external costs that have followed.
The tuition freeze experiment of trying to make universities more accessible while maintaining (not degrading) its quality was doomed to fail from the outset, especially coupled with the ostensible unwillingness to adjust our provincial fiscal expenditures accordingly.
You can’t just curb an inflow of money into an institution that is increasingly starved for it from one source, not compensate with more from elsewhere, then have the nerve to expect positive results.
If any criticism of the tuition freeze policy’s success or shortcomings is warranted, it should be that it had no substance from the beginning. Since it was an experiment that could have easily been predicted to fail from the outset, it can’t really even be regarded as much of an experiment at all, unless people honestly feel it is justifiable to hold students accountable for the rising costs of their education.
Though students reap many personal rewards from a university education, they should not be expected to foot a large proportion of an increasingly expensive bill for things like technological and infrastructural improvements and faculty wage increases. These should be considered a part of maintaining and achieving the benefits that universities offer the public and society. And the more people that can afford access to universities, the better for everyone.
Of course we want our universities to attract and hold top-notch faculty, staff and students. Of course this requires financial security and all the corresponding bells and whistles — infrastructure, modern technology and so on. If the public wants institutions that facilitate education, research, a skilled and innovative citizenry and workforce, the public ought to be willing to pay.
I believe the public is at a crossroads of sorts. We have to decide how important (if at all) the benefits of public education and research at a post-secondary level are to us. For if, indeed, folks feel they are important, then we should be prepared to foot the bill for the increasing costs. Why should individual users of the institution be burdened with these additional costs while, arguably, all of society reaps the benefits of its output?
An important thing to consider in this whole debate, too, is that if education is an investment that the public doesn’t maintain control over, profit-hungry, private interests will do so, gladly, and at the public expense.
After all, if funds for things like medical or social research and training don’t come from the public purse, they will certainly come from the burgeoning industry-sector’s, who will surely be in it for the profits rather than the public interest.
The private sector has reaped the rewards of its willingness to invest in all kinds of ways so far. Corporation slike Apotex, Monsanto and Bayer have gained access to top research and researchers from universities like ours, slapped patents on their ideas, and sold them for billions in profits in the marketplace in exchange for small sums of royalties (usually around one per cent of sales).
And by showering private cash onto certain, potentially profitable areas of university research (ie. medicine, engineering, biotech), only profitable (ie. favourable) results are acceptable, regardless of their implications to the public (ie. health, environmental).
Be it through control over intellectual property generated or through the creation of imbalances in the types and areas of research available and accessible to students and researchers, these elements of universities are better left out of the hands of profiteers. The public needs to re-stake its claim on education and research if we are to reap the rewards.
It is high time we realize that by not investing public dollars in institutions that inevitably have a significant role in shaping society, we will only distance them from the public’s control, and thus interest.
The type of inflammatory commentary with which the media failed to engage people in this whole tuition freeze debate is the substance that is needed most: the need to invest more public dollars in education so the public can remain in control of it. After all, this spending can be seen as having important benefits for all of society.
Troy Stozek is pursuing a master’s degree in environmental science.
