In the last fifteen years, Canadian university students have been taking it on the chin: average university tuition levels doubled across the country between 1991-92 and 2001-02, according to figures from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. And, in most provinces, this trend continues.

Why are students accepting this gouging? Why have those who once demanded the impossible been so meek in opposing exponential hikes?

“The costs of a university education are being downloaded from the public onto individual students,” said Amanda Aziz, National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students.

Student activism since the 1991 recession—and the 100 per cent tuition increases which followed—has focused on trying to improve access through pushing federal and provincial governments to increase transfers to universities and improve scholarships for students.

However, the key is not access, but control. Canada’s two main student groups, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), have both essentially followed a political program based on attempting to increase access: through government lobbying and activism focused on tuition fees.

As the statistics on rapid tuition increases indicate, the tactics of both groups have been relatively unsuccessful. Thus, it’s time for students to overhaul the fundamental parameters of their lobbying and activism to become effective in changing the political landscape of the university.

The current situation, where student tuition accounts for more than one third of most university operating budgets, has unlocked new possibilities.

At McGill, students control 8 per cent of board seats; 14.2 per cent at University of British Columbia and 6.45 per cent at the University of Ottawa.

“We are definitely concerned about the lack of student representation on boards of governors,” said Aziz. “There is also an interesting story to see who sits on these boards, membership is often dominated by corporate executives.”

Take the University of New Brunswick (UNB) as an example. This year, students will pay $56.3 million in tuition for the 2007-08 school year, accounting for 35.1 per cent of the universities’ total operating budget. Meanwhile, UNB students only control three out of 44 (14.6 per cent) of seats on the board of governors, the universities’ most important decision making body. If students were getting what they paid for, they’d control fifteen seats on the board, rather than the measly three they currently hold.

An editorial in the Dalhousie Gazette with the opening line, “No taxation without representation,&#0148 perfectly explains the current disconnect.

Ironically, groups like the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, who are pushing for universities to operate more like businesses, are not speaking out about this discrepancy.

According to free-market logic (and democratic principles), the shareholders or financiers of any endeavour should maintain a controlling stake.

Giving students more representation on boards of governors won’t solve the fundamental financial issues facing Canadian Universities. It is entirely possible that new student members of boards of governors would pick up where business leaders and government bureaucrats left off. Without public money to invest in universities, students could essentially become their own ‘grave diggers,’ raising tuition because they have no other realistic short-term policy options when it’s time to tabulate annual budgets.

While this situation of students being forced to act against their own material interests would be likely and unfortunate, it should not derail the process of empowering students with decision-making authority concurrent with their level of financial contributions.

In 1999, students in at Mexico’s National Autonomous University went on strike for nine months, protesting the introduction of tuition fees under the banner: “the University Should Belong to Those Who Study in it.” Rather than simply lobbying government for lower tuition, perhaps it’s time students in New Brunswick and across Canada start demanding that the university should belong to those who pay for it.