If this new round of student unrest in Quebec over rising tuition looks like a rerun of a familiar movie, that’s because it is. We’ve seen this script, these street demonstrations, before. But repeated viewing sparks a revelation – how this shouldn’t be seen as an issue of pure principle anymore; this is really about money.
For many years, Quebec had maintained a freeze on university tuition as a matter of principle to facilitate the broadest possible access to post-secondary education. But the heavy weight of Quebec’s public debt has taken a little of the pure principle out of the issue and made tuition more of an ordinary more of a cost item that competes with health and other priorities for spending. And so the Liberal government has decided to increase tuition beginning next fall from the current $2,200 annually to $3,800 over five years.
People can disagree over whether it is wise for Quebec to raise tuition fees – this newspaper’s position is that increases are necessary to prevent a decline in the quality of Quebec post-secondary education – but there is no doubt a fee hike of $1,500 over five years is going to have an impact on students’ pocketbooks.
There is one thing in this whole debate over tuition that has escaped public attention. It’s the fact that an uncommonly high number of CEGEP and university students in Quebec do not live with their parent(s). Even as many hold part-time jobs, they have household expenses many other Canadian students do not have – although, to be sure, $3,800 will still be less than the current Canadian tuition average of $5,200.
The 2006 federal census found a minority of Quebecers in their 20s, just 38.7 per cent, lived with their parents, versus 43.5 per cent in Canada as a whole and a slight majority, 51.5 per cent, in Ontario. Historically, Quebecers have always tended to leave the roost early. Why they continue to do so today is an interesting sociological question; but as far as their personal finances are concerned, it means many young Quebecers do struggle to make ends meets.
It should also be pointed, however, that as a tool to facilitate university access, exceptionally low tuition hasn’t produced remarkably high university enrolment, or degree-attainment, in Quebec versus the rest of the country. It’s like medicare: it might be free, but many people still don’t get annual medical checkups. There’s some truth to the aphorism that low Quebec tuition has been a huge subsidy to the middle class more than anything else.
So far this week, more than 36,000 Quebec students have joined a so-called students’ strike that, it is to be hoped, will end quickly. There’s no way it is going to get the government to rescind planned tuition hikes. What’s more, student associations in various universities have begun passing anti-strike resolutions to show that the demonstrators on the street don’t represent mainstream student opinion.
One might not have a lot of sympathy for the strikers, or for students who are vociferously opposed to lifting the tuition freeze – supposedly on principle. But when you look at this issue in broader terms, as a pure money issue, or as metaphor for what young people are looking at more generally today, sympathy is warranted. The loss of opportunity represented by exceptionally low tuition reflects how other windows of opportunity have been closing for young people more generally. Companies are outsourcing work to the Third World. Or, for jobs that aren’t being outsourced, management and organized labour are agreeing to new labour contracts that reduce starting pay and benefits for new (young) workers. And looking far out toward retirement, it is clear defined-benefit pension plans are disappearing.
Young people have good reason to feel insecure, even fight to keep acquired rights. But in the face of all this social, financial and fiscal uncertainty, the best thing a young woman or man can do is get an education, a university degree. Because that’s the passport to money – not to mention the principles that having money allows you to more easily afford.