Is the tuition freeze worth the effort?

UMSU is asking for the wrong thing

SAMUEL MCLAUGHLIN

So, the banners have gone up, and the scarves have come out. We all know what time it is, we’ve seen it before. Our beloved students’ union has started their “hold (politician X) over the fire. Freeze tuition!” campaign. Seems like a pretty good idea. I mean, who doesn’t want affordable tuition?

But, in characteristic fashion, our representatives have taken the low road, going for an adversarial tact instead of one of co-operation with the people who actually get to make decisions: the university administration and the provincial and federal governments. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for activism. The reason that we support the right to hold rallies is that activism and voting are really the only two ways available to the average citizen to make their voice heard.

But UMSU and the CFS are not lobbying, they are demanding. And from a cynic’s point of view, it may just be a ploy to stir up the student body so that it looks like they are actually doing something productive, just in time for the next UMSU election. It always seemed suspect to me that tuition rates don’t matter until February every year.

What I take the greatest issue with, however, is that UMSU has made the mistake of asking for the wrong thing. “Tuition freeze” sounds like a great idea when you’re chanting it through a megaphone, and certainly there are a lot of good plays on words you can put into slogans using the term — the “freeze the fees” hockey tournament, for example — but there is nothing more short-sighted than asking the government to continue freezing tuition fees. Imagine for a second that UMSU and the CFS succeeded in convincing some combination of the provincial and federal governments to indefinitely maintain a tuition fee freeze. What does this mean for you, the student? First of all, it means that you’ll have more spending money, which of course means more beer money. Undoubtedly, this is a good thing. I like beer, so I’d argue that this is a very good thing.

But what else does it mean? For starters, it completely ignores inflation. The annual rate of inflation is about three per cent. This means that money buys three per cent less every year. It also means that wages should be three per cent higher each year (there’s a little lag). What it also means is that your university must spend an extra three per cent every year on microscopes and Petri plates and whatever you arts students need — books, I guess. It also means that they must spend three per cent more every year in order to retain professors of an equal calibre. All in all, the university has to spend three per cent more every year than it did on the last year.

A tuition freeze ignores this basic economic fact. An opponent would say that the government should be covering the three per cent difference. This would keep the tuition fee freeze from affecting the university’s operating budget. Sure, this seems like a good plan. But wouldn’t a better idea be to allow the tuition to, at the very least, rise with inflation, and use that same money from the government to augment these funds? What would you think of a NGO if they said one day, “We refuse to spend a penny more on AIDS medication for Africa; right now we can’t afford to give antiretrovirals to half of those infected. So instead of treating the 50 per cent we can and asking for more money to treat the rest, we’re gonna just give everyone Aspirin because we can afford to give that to everyone right now?” My guess is that you’d think that they were idiots.

The whole point is that, while affordable tuition is immensely important, how should affordability be balanced with a quality education? Let’s do a little gedanken experiment. Imagine for a second that we could cut tuition fees in quarter. At about $750, literally anyone could afford to go to university. Imagine further that the federal government was willing to match every dollar spent by students on tuition. This means that student fees available to the university would be half their current rate. This would mean that they would have to fire half the professors, double the class sizes, half as many computers would be available, and science students would have to share one rat in a group of 12.

Sure, everyone who has the ability can go to university, but how much is that degree going to be worth in the long run? This is an extreme example, but the point of it is that if we allow UMSU to keep pushing the forced tuition freeze, we run the risk of eroding the quality of our education and the value of our degrees. We should be demanding more funding from government. What we shouldn’t be doing is applying this money to freeze our tuition.

Personally, I would rather pay more for my education and receive a good one than get the bargain-barrel, blue light special degree.

Samuel Mclaughlin is a fourth-year microbiology student at the University of Manitoba.