"I honestly now believe that the Premier hates education. I can understand that, because I suspect that every time someone in Ontario gets an education, the Premier loses a vote." Liberal MPP Ernie Parsons

I found that my privatization page was not sufficient to say all I wanted about the way Mike Harris and Co. have been treating Ontario's post-secondary students.

So, here's a summary of the other infuriating and wrong actions they have taken since they took office.

Tuition Increases:

To many people, this is the most obvious injustice. Things have gotten so bad in this area, some students are having to work multiple part-time jobs and/or go to food banks just to keep their heads above water. Government assistance like OSAP clearly does not do enough for them. This is a vicious cycle: as NDP Colleges and Universities Critic Rosario Marchese put it, "If we starve the education system, it will only feed the growing gap between the rich and the poor in Ontario. Only the rich will be able to afford to obtain the skills they need to get a good paying job, while poorer students will be stuck in low-pay, dead end jobs." And yet for some inexplicable reason, Premier Harris thinks it's acceptable to keep raising the fees every year. The Tories have money to give tax cuts to major corporations (who aren't exactly struggling in Ontario right now) and money to do radio and TV ads about how wonderful their government is. But apparently there's no money to cut tuition or even freeze it, giving students a break that is long overdue.

Deregulation:

Giving programs increased freedom to raise their fees was extremely unfair to students. As I mentioned on the previous page, one law school raised first-year tuition 43% in just a year, and that's only one example. How can they possibly expect students to keep up with such major tuition hikes? Certainly, some of the blame must lie with university administrators who are not representing the best interests of students. But the Conservative government should not have deregulated programs in the first place. And I have to ask, where will this end? Right now it is mainly graduate and professional programs that are deregulated, but what is stopping them from applying this to other programs?

The Millennium Scholarship:

This happened earlier this year, but I believe it is worth mentioning. And bad news for Mike Harris: he can't blame this one on Ottawa. The federal government decided to give $3000 scholarships to some students, which was nice, but it fell to the provinces to distribute the money. Instead of students receiving the money directly, it went to the banks that held their loans. It gets worse. The so-called scholarship went to paying back a portion of their debt that they would not have been responsible for anyway under a policy of debt forgiveness. It was reprehensible for the Tories to reward the banks instead of the students who can use extra money more than ever these days.

The Student Debt Problem:

Am I blaming Mike Harris for students being in debt? No. Student debt has obviously been around longer than this Ontario government. But simple logic dictates that higher tuition fees equal higher debts. And under recent legislation, students who file for bankruptcy protection are not exempt from paying their student loans. Student debt is seen by many as an issue that mostly affects students and their families. Actually, it is more far-reaching. An example: We have a shortage of doctors in Ontario. This means that people have to delay necessary medical treatment or travel far out of their way to see a doctor; this travel is particularly difficult for people who have a low income. It also leads to overcrowded emergency rooms because people without a personal physician need go to the hospital for every health problem. What does this have to do with student debt? Well, medical school is extremely expensive and many graduates have huge debts. This can be a factor in their deciding to move to the US to practice; they will make more money there and be able to pay off their loans in a shorter time. The system of student loans has to be reformed.

Bad Funding Criteria:

There are three main issues I would like to discuss here.

Funding that pits schools against each other: SuperBuild comes to mind here. These capital grants were given to some schools and not others. As Liberal Colleges and Universities Critic Marie Bountrogianni commented, "SuperBuild is a super bust." SuperBuild is not the cure-all implied by the government because many schools had plans for it and ended up being rejected. This type of thing causes schools to compete for funding instead of presenting a united front against the tight-fisted Harris Tories.

Funding based on graduate employability: This discriminates against the liberal arts because students in these programs often take longer to find jobs than students in more technical programs. It also diminishes the role of universities, demanding that they become training schools for specific jobs rather than repositories of knowledge. And in the event of an economic downturn, students could find it more difficult to get jobs. Penalizing universities for the condition of the economy is totally illogical.

Funding based on graduation rate: Sure, universities are in the business of giving students degrees and if you had a university where nobody graduated, that would be a serious problem. But sometimes students don't graduate for reasons that are not the university's fault. Maybe they switched schools to be closer to home. Maybe they simply decided university wasn't for them. We should not blame the university for that. Or since this is Mike Harris's Ontario, maybe they couldn't afford the ever-increasing fees. The government demands that we finish school, but they keep making it harder to do so. While they're at it, why don't they just give us a textbook, demand that we finish reading it, then start ripping out pages?

DON'T LISTEN TO EXCUSES!

The Tories can give many reasons for what they are doing to the post-secondary education system. "It's the previous government's fault." "It's Ottawa's fault." Perhaps Harris's Cabinet has read the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin says, "It's easier to blame things than to fix them." Don't fall for it. Harris has been in office for five years, so blaming the previous administration is getting a little old. It's true that Ottawa did cut transfer payments to the provinces, but when Harris spends transfer payments on more tax cuts instead of using them as intended, he is hardly in a position to complain about not having enough money. This isn't just a financial issue. It is also an issue of priorities; some governments see post-secondary education as an investment in the future, an area that has to be nurtured because it will enrich our society. These governments have managed to lower tuition or at least avoid increases. They have managed to give operating grants and other needed funding. Other governments, like the Ontario Tories, feel that representing the interests of corporations and people with incomes of six figures or higher is more important than representing public universities and the students who attend them.

Final thought: University will never be easy for most students. We will always have to pull all-nighters to finish our reading assignments and get freaked out by term paper deadlines and make difficult decisions about our majors. I think most of us accept that. But many of the problems and stresses students face in Ontario today would not exist if our government had the compassion and the political will to fix them. I no longer expect this government to be compassionate, but let's at least hold them accountable for their betrayal of the university system.

TUITION INCREASES: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws