Magazine Options Carrières.

I’ve got a quick question. I support lowering tuition fees to make education more accessible. I feel that a better educated population will be more capable of leading Canada, and making the country, lacking a more precise word, better.
I’ve heard stories from my family of attending the University of Toronto with a $500 dollar scholarship that covered more than half of tuition for a year and books. Needless to say, things have changed.
So besides mass protests, which I believe go gather the attention of people and politicians, how do people go about changing the current situation?
Politicians do not seem to take students seriously, as they do not vote in the same numbers as older generations. Canada still participates in anti-intellectual discourse, just look at the conversation around Michael Ignatieff’s history with Harvard. People frowned on the fact that he is a reputable scholar and professor.
How can students, and those who support them change the situation when Canada seems apathetic to the plight of education?

Those are some pretty shocking statistics. I was especially surprised to learn that user fees now represent 50% of the typical institution’s operating budget – up from 21% not so long ago. And with a 4% to 8% escalation in fees per year, the user-fee percentage of the budget will surely continue to increase. I have a feeling that this will not lead the institutions to have more dollars to spend on improving programs and facilities… Probably it’s just making it easier for governments to slack off on funding. Of course, the worst is the burden this trend is imposing on already overstretched students. This will likely deter many worthy people from pursuing post-secondary education.

Well I have to be honest and say that I take an alternative view to the whole lower tuition fees argument. I would like to submit an article to present an alternative view on a subject that seems to be rarely debated on college and university campuses.

This article was published in The Fulcrum, the University of Ottawa’s student newspaper (http://www.thefulcrum.ca/articles/22637).

Take a minute to read this article and familiarize yourself with the alternate side of this debate. Lowering tuition fees may not be the solve all solution that the CFS thinks it will be.