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Emphasis added. I've spent a not-insignificant amount of time looking up the available research on this issue, and I've seen nothing that suggests that free tuition on its own would have a material effect on PSE attainment rates. The living stipend issue is much more important.
You've got this exactly wrong. Rich kids are twice as likely to go to university than are poor kids. That means that they are receiving twice as much public money. Is there any other context in which you'd be comfortable with rich people having twice as much access to public services than the poor?
[ 21 September 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]
But pursuit of a university degree is something else, another animal altogether. It's the brass ring, both sides of the coin so to speak. And with that educational attainment oftentimes is associated with significantly higher paying jobs. This isn't always the case though, and Canada is in a kind of transition phase with the kinds of jobs being created at this point in time, imo. There is much room for improvement, and the job opportunities in high tech and knowledge economy will happen for them eventually. I just think the right to access PSE should be maintained. A basic three year degree is nothing very special nowadays as far as the job market goes.
[ 21 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]
(1) In the current funding environment, it is true that rich kids are twice as likely to go to university as are poor kids. Arguably, this would not be the case in unionist's preferred funding environment.
(2) The kids aren't rich. Their parents are. The kids aren't even kids: they are adults with rich parents. I am not sure that I like our current strategy of determine an adult's funding on the basis of her parents' income and assets. I certainly would not want my parents' income and assets to affect a decision as to whether I receive a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts (for example).
(3) Rich people are also more likely to use the highways than poor people, since rich people are more likely to own cars. (This reiterates a point of unionist's.) Should we charge for highway use, giving fee waivers to poor people?
(4) Given our progressive tax system, rich people already pay more for their education and for their highway use than poor people, by virtue of paying more taxes.
(5) One way to subsidize poor people's education is to provide bursaries. Another way is to make it free for everyone, and increase the taxes on the rich just the right amount. The second strategy seems more efficient, and would certainly eliminate any bursary-administering bureaucracy.
You're still mixing up cause and effect - premises and conclusions.
If health care were user-pay, then rich people would be much more likely to use it than poor people. If Tommy Douglas then said, "let's make it free!", would you say: "No, that would just be a gift to the rich??"
Aha, and touche. I get the feeling Stephen Gordon will come back with something to the effect that health care is higher on the immediate needs list of high priorities than is a university degree. We've got shortages of other affordable necessities in Canada and affecting poor people and students alike, like housing. Housing, to me, is another big item that markets aren't fulfilling needs for poorer Canadians, students and families alike.
I've seen no evidence to support such a claim.
This would be a persuasive argument if kids from rich families weren't twice as likely to go to university. But they are, so it isn't.
I have no problem with that; it reduces inequality.
It had never occurred to me that the idea that rich people are entitled to more public money because they pay more in taxes could ever be considered a progressive principle. Is there any other context in which you'd be willing to make the same argument?
It's certainly an efficient way of giving rich kids free money.
[ 21 September 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]
Tuition is not the principle barrier between kids from low-income households and PSE; see this StatsCan study.
Would you be okay with a public health care system in which poor people went to hospitals whose funding levels that were half of those that rich people used?
[ 21 September 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]
University??? My son is in Year 7 (Grade 6 in North American parlance) and he has to have a laptop. No option.
[ 21 September 2007: Message edited by: abnormal ]
There are poor kids from poor families in India and other countries where tuition is low or free for the needy and who do choose higher education as a way out of poverty. And they aren't punished with oppressive levels of debt if high-paying jobs aren't there for them at the end of it.
I think there should be a basic three year BA in Canada. No tuition. Kids today should receive a classic education in the areas of humanities, languages, arts, math and science FOC as a right of citizenship.
And if industry wants trained seals, then let them pay. Separate classic education from industrial needs. But everyone should have access to both sides of the coin if that is their free will. Without a well-informed and educated public(and some democratic control of money creation), there can be no democracy.
I'm aware of that. I think you've heard me many times, but I'll repeat. Education is a social need, like health care, water, public libraries. It should be provided free of charge. Barriers to participation are many and varied, and those require other solutions - as we have also discussed on many occasions.
This is parallel to our ongoing debate about minimum wage. You keep repeating that raising it doesn't solve poverty. I keep telling you that that's not why it should be raised (it should be raised for the same reason that we have mandatory maximum work hours and health and safety legislation, to provide a lower limit to exploitation and competition between workers), and that poverty needs many and varied solutions (providing expanding ranges of socially necessary goods for free, full employment policies, public child care, free skills and job training, etc. etc.).
Maybe we should just agree to disagree on what kind of world we should live in? Mine resembles something called "socialism".
No - but I never said that making university tuition free was more than one small but absolutely indispensable piece of the equation.
I think you've got part of it right and a big part at that. The other part, which is not insignificant, is the value parents place on education. If your parents don't place a lot of value on education, odds are you won't either. And I expect that's a function of socio-economic status.
And why are rich kids more likely to go to university in the first place?
Because they (or more accurately, their parental units) can afford to go, and because the cost isn't psychologically daunting.
People trotted out the exact same excuses 150 years ago when they debated making K-12 universal. And you're ignoring all kinds of socioeconomic factors that go into why rich kids (whose parental units can afford to spring for living expenses) get to go in greater numbers.
It is not an accident that students going to university these days tend to live at home if they can - they've got no other choice!
The student loan system also perversely rewards poorer students moving out and taking an apartment. If you get a student loan and indicate that you're living with the parental unit, you get a measly $1500. Per semester.
That's not even enough to cover tuition, and don't natter at me about bursaries. They're not guaranteed, and it's more likely the kids with bigger student loans and more expenses will get them first anyway.
[ 21 September 2007: Message edited by: DrConway ]
I just think there is a lot of inefficiency with the current setup. A friend of mine has a computer science degree. He's working at The Beer Store. There is much overlap in the system to say the least, and it tends to benefit big business. They are the main benefactors of an oversupply of well-edcuated unemployed and underemployed workforce.
In the depression era, there were five or ten labourers for every one of those jobs available.
And before that during the industrial revolution in England, and after big industry and finance picked up and moved there from Holland because workers there became too organized, it was the same thing. But there was grinding poverty in Victorian times. And the captains of industry said that the street urchins needed direction. So education was directed toward training children to be useful for industrial purposes in aiding the rich to become richer. British children recited facts and figures pertaining to the empire on demand. It's not the same as today, but it sounds good for thread dicussion. It's all very inefficient, and I think we need to separate the chaff from the wheat in order not to oversupply industry with trained seals at taxpayer's expense. Classic or basic higher ed should be a basic human right for all, and perhaps included in some sort of global NAFTA for workers. "They don't need no education They don't need no thought control No dark sarcasm in ..."
[ 21 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]
I dont know where someone got the idea that rich kids are twice (sic) as likely to go to uni/college. Im honestly irritated at that sort of claptrap (and Im being fucking polite here)
Are we too stuck in 1970's view of postsecondary institutions or is it just US skew? Maybe we need to watch less John Belushi films [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
However,
So many poor and lower-middle class kids, as least here in the GTA absolutely need and want desperqately to attend and finish university. Especially in the immigrant communities, like myself and many of my friends. When they get accepted they try to make the tution ends meet, dsepite poor OSAP conditions. To balance the loans with work hours, and like Dr.Conway said, many simply choose to stay with parents. But more on that later.
OK, lets be fair. The tuition here isnt so bad as in the States, but then again they(yanks) have all sort of crazy stuff going on: the infamous football/basketball scholarships, minority quotas, private donations etc.
Anything in order to weasel out of supporting efficient and affordable post-secondary for all...
Im not gonna go all scientific shit here, so please excuse me. Ill get to the point,
Like I said, tuition in Ontario is better than in the States, but worse than in almost all provinces.
McGuinty has removed the tuition cap last year as you may be aware by now.
Here at YorkU, a standard, 3credit-1 semester course is now worth $504. Standard, max course load for the academic year is 30 credits, therefore $5040. The tuition rose by $20 per course, resulting in a $200 increase for the full year.
That is one of the reasons I never took a full-course load, and chose to stretch out my study instead. I also choose not to be burdened with debt, so all I have left is the unpaid OSAP loan at about $2000. I only received OSAP funding for the 1st year. I guess they thought my family wasnt poor enough for them.. Just dark humour here, dont mind.
Either way, I dont quite have enough money to pay for this year, so I might need to take another huge loan. Asking for more loans from my parents is uncomfortable. OSAP isnt really a possibility. I guess I need to move to a dirty aprtment for that purpose. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
Im not the only one in the province, of course. Ive met many students who were in even more financial struggle, trying to balance the scales.
Some even had to take a year off to work.
Think about that.
Sure there are lots of well-dressed folks with their fancy laptops, but they arent exactly the average university student in Canada.
And dont even get me started on these corporate stooges in university admin.
They take a lotta corporate donations just fine, and their salaries have never been higher.
President and lower level deans and assistants earning $200-250 k? And they complain about balanceing the univeristy expenses?Honestly WTF??
People must stand up for the young people's right to affordable and proper education. We are the future and we are being left behind in the changing world.
SO How about some understanding?
These are readily-verifiable facts. Check out Figure 2.IV.2 of this 393-page pdf file, or Chart 5 from from this 31-page pdf.
I'm not arguing that PSE students who need help shouldn't get it. I'm saying that PSE students who don't need help shouldn't get free money.
[ 11 October 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]
And the level of interest charged on Canadian student loans is scandalous to say the least. NDP MP Denise Savoie says the profit motive should be eliminated from the Canada Student Loan Program. It's busted, Jim.
[ 11 October 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]
So I'm wondering for what purpose they intend to cite the fact that kids from well off families tend to access PSE at greater rates, and even moreso now that PSE costs an arm and leg over a quarter century worth of student loan debt sentence on average.
I know some well off families who drive newer cars and access travel agencies more than poorer families. So what?
Because that's like saying desperately poor people in subharan Africa use less water than rich white people do. Therefore, we're going to marketize and raise the price of water because rich white people aren't paying enough?
[ 11 October 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]
Back to tuition.
I notice Sven hasn't piped up in this thread at all, ever since I pointed out how ludicrous it is to claim that the hi-ho-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps rhetoric doesn't amount to a hill of beans when there are still barriers to the theoretical equality of opportunity that he claims exists in Canada and the USA.
I had a great deal of fun reading Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream, and the basic theme that kept coming up is that the notion that we have to let the powers that be (namely, rich people and big corporations) turn up the speed on the treadmill the rest of us have to run on, is a load of crap. We have choices and we have options, and one of them darn well is to be able to say "no, we're not going to let you guys keep cranking up the speed on this goddamn treadmill until we all collapse from exhaustion running at the insane speed you want us to run at".
The Europeans have their own problems, sure, but the point is, they have proven that socialism, and capitalism, with a human face is possible. I've got the feeling that the 21st century is passing the USA by, and it has a lot to do with the fact that Americans are culturally and socially deluded into thinking that because they get a measly two weeks vaycay per year (which, for the most part, isn't even mandated by the government - oh, no, it's "kindly" given to employees by the oh-so-munificent employer who'd as soon fire 'em as keep 'em... I may barf yet!), they're NUMBAH ONE... then again the SuperBowl, which features US teams only, names the winning team the "World Champions" - a rather vivid testament to the navel-gazing nature of the world's wealthiest nation.
Europeans get three to six weeks vaycay per year and don't seem to be suffering horribly for it. This ties into the access-to-education issue. Sure, university attendance is higher in Canada and the USA, but I suspect an artificial bias in these two nations because of the social stigma attached to vocational and technical training, even though such work is beneficial to society and needs to be done by people who honestly want to do the work.
[ 12 October 2007: Message edited by: DrConway ]
Magic? No. Just a better use of public money than subsidies to rich people.
Rich people's access to water in S. Africa and PSE here aren't affected either way. Our stoogeocrats in Ottawa should stop gouging kids with ridiculous interest rates on student loans.
The bozos in Ottawa and Calgary should tax parasitic American energy companies for accessing our fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow. Canada's national energy plan is whatever transnational energy companies decide it will be down in Houston and Wall Street.
You know, when ecomomists dreamed up the magic of government transfers, some of the uses to which they put this part of the magic bag of tricks of economists make me seriously wonder if I exist on the same planet as you guys, 'cuz apparently just about every problem on the face of the earth seems to magically go away with "government transfers".
Some guy even dreamed up how free trade would work slicker than a greased pig if winners from free trade somehow magically compensated losers from free trade in some sort of Byzantine scheme, implemented by, guess what - government transfers.
In real life, we don't do this. In the industrial nations access to water is seen as such a basic requirement of human living that we don't charge people by the liter (or if we do meter usage, the limits are pretty generous and you'd have to waste a helluva lot of water to really feel the pinch), and we provide nearly universal access to water that's clean and sanitary.
In effect, we've accomplished (via taxes and other cross-subsidization mechanisms that don't operate on the individual, but at the government, level) in a far saner method, in my view, what this magic government-transfers-directly-to-the-poor-and-charging-by-the-liter trick supposedly does in places like Africa.
Even Bolivia got out of the clipping-people-by-the-liter business when they reformed the water company into a collective cooperative.
I'm thinking our CMA and engineering associations act similarly here in Canada. And how many new universities have we built in Canada since 1980?
But then Baker mentions the possibility for Walmart universities if there were free trade provisions that would recognize professional certification internationally, a free trade agreement for workers!
We, the undersigned, residents of Canada, draw the attention of the Minister to the following:
THAT students who are forced to take out a loan in order to attain a postsecondary education (PSE) will pay considerably more for that education than those who can afford to pay upfront;
THAT chronic federal underfunding of core postsecondary education has led to soaring tuition fees and average student debt that is approaching $25,000;
THAT Canada’s student loan system should be clear, fair, and responsive to students’ needs and circumstances; but instead it is currently a nightmare for thousands of student borrowers because of mishandled files, rigid and
complicated processes, inadequate debt relief measures, abusive collection agencies, and other problems;
THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon the minister to make certain that the review of Canada’s student loan system addresses and resolves the flaws in the system in each the following ways:
• Create a federal, need-based grant system for all Canada student loans in every year of study, by rolling in the budget of poorly targeted federal PSE programs and the expiring Millennium Scholarship Foundation;
• Reduce the federal student loan interest rate;
• Create a federal Student Loan Ombudsperson to help students navigate the loan system, objectively resolve problems and ensure that students are treated with fairness and respect;
• Provide better relief during repayment of student loans, including expanding eligibility for permanent disability benefits, interest relief and debt reduction;
• Create enforceable federal standards governing the conduct of government and private student loan collection agents, subject to the policy objective of helping students find ways to repay their loan;
• Amend the “lifetime limit” on student loans such that they are not repayable until six months after the completion of full-time studies, including doctoral programs and medical residency;
• Reduce the discriminatory ban on bankruptcy protection for student loans to two years;
• Address the recommendations of the Coalition for Student Loan Fairness and other student groups