In the United States, the average cost of college tuition ranges from $20,000 to $50,000/yr. In Canada, where post-secondary education is significantly supported by provincial governments, tuition costs range from a high of $6,600/year in Ontario to a low of $2,500/yr in Quebec. Guess which province has students in the streets protesting a $325/year increase in tuition?
Here's a couple of basic facts.
Post-secondary education in Canada is subsidized by taxpayers who pick up the tab for about 75% of the annual cost. Clearly this isn’t good enough for many students in Quebec who seem to feel that they have only a limited, if any, responsibility to pay for their education.
Annual tuition for a basic BA at McGill University in Montreal and one of the country's leading institutions cost Quebec students $2,100 / year. By contrast, an international student who must pay the full tuition cost rather than the one subsidized for Canadian students by taxpayers is charged $14,000 / year for the same degree. In Ontario, at Queen's University, another of Canada's leading educational institutions, the cost to Canadian students is more than $5,000 / year.
At Queen's the annual tuition for a medical degree is approximately $19,000 but at McGill, Quebec students are only charged $3,000 annually and they feel hard done by.
It is not a uniquely Canadian attitude.
I'm not surprised. Self-reliability is a concept that is as alien to Occupy as common sense.
The argument put forward by students in Quebec, and groups like Occupy, is that getting a university education benefits the state, therefore the state should pay most, if not all, of the freight for its cost.
There is a counter argument that the education has far more benefit to the individual than the state which would suggest that the individual has a greater responsibility than the state; but let’s not quibble over logic. Let’s assume that most of the precious dears who think the state owes them a free ride are correct.
If the benefit accrues to the state and the state should therefore pay for the education, it also hold true then that the state should have a say in what individual students are going to study. There isn’t much demand for graduates of a program like “Social Practices in Art” or “The History of Philosophy.” (One can almost predict that if graduates from these programs don't find positions as academics, they will be living a good portion of their adult lives on social assistance where they will no doubt expect even more support from the taxpayer.)
Canada, for example, needs more doctors, engineers programmers, technicians and people who are trained in business-related disciplines. We also need more trades people like bricklayers, carpenters and electricians. We don't need more art critics and dillitants. We have more than enough of those employed at taxpayer expense at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and The Canada Council For The Arts.
If the state is to pay for the education because the state is to be the ultimate beneficiary of that education then the state should identify which programs each individual student should take.This, of course, won’t be popular with students or Occupy and it has been tried before in places like the Soviet Union where it was equally unpopular. It was clear that depending on the state for everything as has been seen in North Korea, The Soviet Union and other countries that paid for everything doesn’t work out too well. One by one, those countries sank into poverty, oppression and ultimately, many simply fell apart.
What makes a country successful is the willingness of individuals to take responsibility for their own lives while making a contribution to their country. In other words, they don’t depend on the state to be successful; the state depends on them to function successfully as individuals and being fully responsible for their own lives.
It is an oxymoron to suggest that one can be independent and self-reliant while expecting others to pick up the tab.
In the end the argument that the state should pay because the state benefits is specious. The beneficiary of the education is the student. The state has no guarantee that the student will graduate, will be successful if they do graduate or even that the graduated student will remain in the country where they will put their education to good use for the benefit of a grateful nation.
Education is a privilege and a responsibility. Nobody owes anyone a free ride and the self-serving arguments by ‘kids’ who for the most part are barely out of the cocoon of having mommy and daddy pay for their lives up to this point is absurd.
The state is not an independent entity in and of itself. It is people and most of those people are taxpayers who don’t owe anyone a free or almost free education. We’ve already footed the bill for all of the education every student has received up to the end of secondary school. Now it’s their turn to contribute and merely showing up for class and graduating isn’t enough of a contribution!
Taxpayers have other things to pay for like social programs for the poor and disadvantaged, health care, highways and roads, environmental and consumer protection, justice and defense. Post-secondary education is primarily the responsibility of the student and no one else. It’s time for those who feel they have been oppressed by having to take responsibility for their own lives, to get over this self-absorbed, everything for free, Utopian self-centred fantasy and embrace the realities of the real world.
Demands that the state owe them a cheap or even free university education is just one more example of an unwarranted sense of entitlement in a world that already has too much of it! It's nothing less than a hissy-fit by spoled, self-centred and selfish children pretending to be grown up. They need to get over themselves!
Demands that the state owe them a cheap or even free university education is just one more example of an unwarranted sense of entitlement in a world that already has too much of it! It's nothing less than a hissy-fit by spoled, self-centred and selfish children pretending to be grown up. They need to get over themselves!
And one more thing.
Instead of blaming the state for the high cost of education, protesters who think the cost of college is too high should take a look at those six-figure salaried professors who stand in solidarity with them. They, along with those who work in administration at universities and colleges, are the primary reason that tuition costs keep increasing.
Instead of blaming the state for the high cost of education, protesters who think the cost of college is too high should take a look at those six-figure salaried professors who stand in solidarity with them. They, along with those who work in administration at universities and colleges, are the primary reason that tuition costs keep increasing.
If they want to protest something, protest the greed of academics and administrators and leave the taxpayer alone.I’m tired of the posturing by people who think that they have a right to be fully independent while others pick up the tab for their independence. That isn’t independence, that’s nothing but pure and simple greed. It is no different than the greed they criticize on wall street and in corporations.
Don’t want to pay for your education? No problem. Get a job and forget university.
Don’t want to pay for your education? No problem. Get a job and forget university.
McDonalds is hiring.
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