It is up to Engineering students to decide

CARSON JEREMA STAFF

Last week a bomb was dropped on UMSU — right in the middle of an election campaign. Thankfully, all executive positions are going uncontested and UMSU can direct its efforts towards interfering in the affairs of the University of Manitoba Engineering Society (UMES). UMES council voted to hold a referendum where engineering students will be asked if they support a $40 per credit hour increase to their tuition. If the referendum passes it calls into question the legitimacy of UMSU when it claims that it is truly speaking in the interests of all students when it protests for lower tuition.

The move came after the faculty of engineering consulted with the student society and addressed concerns about deteriorating quality of education. The increase would bring engineering courses up to $144 per credit hour, still lower than the University of Saskatchewan’s $156 and much lower than the University of Toronto’s $220 per credit hour. As everyone knows, an engineering degree is one of the most valuable for recent graduates seeking gainful employment.

Concerns of declining quality are not new, but until now the U of M administration has been covering the faculty’s deficit allowing engineering to stay afloat. However, late last year the administration said no more. And so in a faculty where teaching assistants are a rare, underpaid commodity, where “tenure-track” has been virtually removed from parlance and where lab equipment is either out-dated or non-existent, alternative options are needed to pay the bills.

Three weeks ago CFS coordinated a National Day of Action to demonstrate student support for lower tuition fees. If engineering students vote “yes” it will be an embarrassment to UMSU and CFS.

In response UMSU and CFS began backing the “no” side of the referendum under the campaign Engineering students Against Tuition Hikes or EAT Hikes. The EAT Hikes website is registered by UMSU and CFS is listed as hosting the site. At the council meeting on Thursday, UMSU voted to officially support the “no” side.

This is not the first time UMSU has been criticized for interfering in a non-UMSU referendum. In 2001 complaints were raised that UMSU was unduly interfering in the Graduate Students’ Association plebiscite to join CFS. Or more to the point, UMSU is behaving now in much the same way as it did when Stephen Fletcher was president. This should be worrisome for UMSU execs as the Fletcher years, rife with accusations of running UMSU as a dictatorship, are still used as a benchmark by which to claim how progressive UMSU has become.

While the Day of Action garnered much media attention, much of that attention revealed that the argument that lowering tuition makes universities more accessible is based on air.

A Statistics Canada report entitled “Why Are Youth from Lower-income Families Less Likely to Attend University?” released the day after the CFS-organized protest, seems to support this argument. The report cited a host of issues relating more to class socialization than to the actual cost of university. A simple cost/benefit analysis does not explain why students go to university, and consequently, lowering tuition will only serve those who are already attending or already planning to attend. This might explain the paltry turnout to Manitoba’s Day of Action. Many students might simply feel that lowering tuition is not an issue that truly affects them.

The government has failed to adequately fund the tuition fee freeze. No one at the U of M disputes this. Waiting for the government to suddenly put up the cash is no longer a viable option.

In the end, the decision affects engineering students alone and should be left up to them alone. It is the quality of their education and the weight of their degrees at stake. The politically opportunistic should butt out.