All Posts Tagged With: "tuition"
Video appears to show Montreal police attacking protesters
Internal investigation launched
From YouTube video by forgedinhatred
Montreal police have opened an internal investigation into the actions of police officers at an anti-tuition protest that occurred on Jan. 27 outside offices of Quebec’s education ministry.
It comes after a video was posted on YouTube and ciculated on Twitter that appears to show an officer suddenly attacking a small crowd.
It’s the latest evidence of tensions over tuition fees that will rise $325 over the next five years. Just last week, activists called for kidnappings, violence and sabotage to prevent the increases.
Continue reading Video appears to show Montreal police attacking protesters
Alberta Liberals promise free tuition
But students shouldn’t get too excited yet
Raj Sherman by dave.cournoyer on Flickr
If elected later this year, the Alberta Liberals say they would begin eliminating post-secondary tuition and start forgiving up to a $1,000 per year in student loans for working graduates.
Liberal leader Raj Sherman unveiled the platform on Monday in Edmonton ahead of an election that’s expected to be called this spring.
The Liberals would pay for their tuition elimination, forgiven student loans and other new spending with $1.5-billion in tax hikes on corporations and on the wealthiest 10 per cent of earners.
But students dreaming of free school shouldn’t get excited yet. The Liberals have only eight of the legislature’s 83 seats and are running in fourth place with just 12 per cent support, according to a poll by CBC News. The incumbent Progressive Conservatives, led by Premier Alison Redford, had 46 per cent of decided voters in the poll, followed by the upstart Wildrose Alliance at 24 per cent and the New Democrats at 14 per cent.
Quebec activists call for kidnappings, vandalism
Student association blames mobilization committee
Anti-tuition poster by AFELC at UQAM
A student group is distancing itself from a pamphlet bearing its logo that called on students to commit acts of vandalism, kidnapping and sabotage to fight against tuition hikes.
The pamphlet, which circulated last week, bears the logo of AFELC, which represents humanities and communications students at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM).
In a post on the group’s Facebook page, association executives claim they first heard about the pamphlet when they were contacted by reporters. They say that the pamphlet appears to have been created by people involved with the association’s “mobilization committee,” which is an informal wing that fights tuition increases.
Continue reading Quebec activists call for kidnappings, vandalism
More students balance school with jobs
New report shows surprising trends in Quebec
A long night at work. By star5112 on Flickr.
More than half of full-time university students in Quebec work while attending school and more than 40 per cent of all undergraduates work more than 20 hours weekly says a new study by the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, a provincial lobby group that wants lower tuition.
On top of that, more than twice as many full-time students aged 20 to 24 in the province work part-time jobs than students did in the 1970s.
The workloads are hurting their educations: 43 per cent of full-time undergraduates say that their jobs have negatively affected their studies and 30 per cent say their jobs mean they’ll take longer to finish. It’s worst for PhD students—six in 10 say work forced them to prolong their studies.
UBC charged students multiple times
Roughly 530 affected
Roughly 530 students at the University of British Columbia were billed two or three times for housing, tuition or other fees in December due to a glitch in the school’s electronic funds transfer system. More than $2.1 million was mistakenly scooped from accounts, UBC officials told The Ubyssey. Payments made between Dec. 23 and 28 were processed multiple times by a third-party company called BeanStream. UBC says duplicate payments will be credited back to student’s accounts and BeanStream will reimburse students for insufficient funds charges and overdraft fees.
Funding cut and tuition to rise in Nova Scotia
Presidents and student groups complain
Nova Scotia flag by Makaristos/Wikimedia
University presidents and student groups in Nova Scotia are angry about a new three-year funding agreement that includes a three per cent funding cut and a three per cent tuition rise, which is roughly equivalent to annual inflation.
After a four per cent cut last year, plus inflation, there is now a $75-million hole in budgets system-wide, John Harker, chairman of the Council of Nova Scotia University Presidents and president of Cape Breton University told the Chronicle Herald.
The Nova Scotia chapter of the Canadian Federation of Students called the agreement “disappointing.” In a release, chair Maxime Audet said this: “tuition fee increases coupled with reductions in government funding means students in Nova Scotia will be paying more and getting less.”
Continue reading Funding cut and tuition to rise in Nova Scotia
Commandant Camila’s uprising
A student’s revolt against Pinochet’s school reforms
Photo by Victor Ruiz Caballero/Reuters
Story by Richard Warnica.
If one were to rank the legacies of the Pinochet era in Chile, education reform wouldn’t likely make most lists. The former dictator devastated his country in many ways. Thousands of his opponents were murdered or simply disappeared. Countless more were tortured or forced into exile. But Augusto Pinochet also radically deregulated the education market, pulling funds from the public sector in the early 1980s and spreading them into a parallel private system. Remarkably, it is that decision that has his country roiling today.
McGill Principal defends herself
Protesters were “masked and hooded”
McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum told the Montreal Gazette yesterday that she is “sorry” to students who were hurt by pepper spray when riot police showed up at the administration building on Nov. 10. Students have called the response to their occupy-style protest heavy-handed. But Munroe-Blum defends herself by stressing that the occupiers were “masked and hooded,” which frightened the staff. She also added, “when you call the police you don’t tell them how to do their job.” The pepper-spraying at McGill came the same day tens of thousands of Quebec students marched in protest to the annual tuition rise of $325, which will bring fees more in line with the Canadian norm by 2017. Munroe-Blum continues to defend the tuition increases as a way to compete with better-funded schools like the University of British Columbia and University of Toronto. Three police officers at the University of California Davis are on leave after pepper-spraying 11 seated students at an Occupy protest Friday. Those protesters were not masked.
Quebec launches site to sell tuition increase
Students react swiftly with copycat site
Minister Line Beauchamp from Quebec Gov. Video
Quebec’s Liberal government has launched a new website to convince students of the fairness of the annual $325 tuition fee increase that will bring tuition to $3,793 in 2016-17.
But a coalition of student groups quickly launched their own anti-tuition website, which looks almost exactly the same as the government’s.
Student groups cried foul last week when they learned that Quebec had budgeted $50,000 for Internet advertising, including some that attempts to re-route Internet users to the governments’ site whenever they search the names of activist organizations on Google, reported La Presse.
Tens of thousands of students protested the Charest governments’ increase last week, despite the fact that Quebec will continue to have some of the lowest fees in North America even after the rise.
Continue reading Quebec launches site to sell tuition increase
Why the student protests won’t move Charest
Nothing to gain
Protest photo by shahk on Flickr
University students in Quebec continued their fight against annual $325 tuition increases on Nov. 10, protesting in large numbers by skipping classes. Classes were even cancelled at Dawson College and students marched in the streets of Montreal.
It was well organized and peaceful. To get a sense of that, consider that marshals in fluorescent vests helped defuse the tense moments between protesters and police outside Charest’s Montreal office where things might have become violent. Although the sight of riot police on campus is always disturbing, there was only a small cadre of roughly 100 students outside the McGill Administration building when police moved in.
But as big and peaceful as the demonstration was, will it change anything?
Although the 2005 student strike ended with the government giving in to some student demands, Thursday’s much shorter “strike” takes place in a much less friendly political climate and a much more uncertain economy. Even as students were marching in Montreal, education minister Line Beauchamp stood up in the National Assembly to reiterate that students must pay “their fair share.”
It’s easy for her to have such bravado. Premier Jean Charest faces no threats on the left who might gain from angry student voters. The Parti Québécois, the only other party to have formed government in this province since the 1970s, is tearing itself apart.
At the moment, Charest’s biggest political threat comes from the right. François Legault, a former PQ cabinet minister, and his centre-right Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec (CAQ) are leading in recent polls. The Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), a right-wing party with four seats in the National Assembly, is entering into formal negotiations with the CAQ concerning a potential merger.
Legault is on the record saying that students in programs which lead to higher paying jobs should pay more tuition. Considering that kind of thinking, it’s safe to bet that students wouldn’t find a CAQ government any more supportive of their demands.
Huge student protests in Quebec
Tuition fees rising $325 per year
Photo by shahk on Flickr
Unlike in London, U.K., where a planned protest fizzled earlier this week, Quebec students skipped classes en masse Thursday to demonstrate against tuition fee hikes. Some estimate tens of thousands rallied province-wide.* Tens of thousands marched in Montreal alone. The protests were peaceful.
The students are opposed to tuition fee hikes of $325 per year for five years, which will lead to tuition bills of $3,793 by 2017. Quebec students currently pay $2,415—less than half the average in Canada, which is $5,138. Still, they worry about the debt that higher tuition fees will bring.
But Premier Jean Charest is unlikely to back down. His decision in March to raise tuition is supported by university administrators, as they will get $850 million more collectively to operate schools each year after 2017, according to CTV News. The Conference of Rectors and Principals of Quebec Universities argues that quality is at risk without more money injected the system. Considering that Quebec’s gross provincial debt was $173-billion at budget time in March, the government is unable to provide more cash. As in most provinces, the majority of increases in revenue will be eaten up by growing health care costs.
*It was reported by many news agencies, including us, that 200,000 students protested. In fact, the Quebec Federation of University Students reports that the figure was closer to 20,000. We regret the error.
Drug dealer blames student debt
Gets house arrest instead of jail
A student pleaded guilty in a North Bay, Ont. court—and received house arrest—after he was caught with a hefty load of marijuana in his car, an estimated $47,000 worth. Jameson Fletcher’s lawyer argued that his client, a Laurentian University commerce student, was selling drugs to help lessen his $40,000 school debt load, reports the North Bay Nugget. Fletcher was given a punishment of six months served in the community when it’s common to receive jail-time, said the deciding judge, Justice Jean-Gilles Lebel. Despite the light sentence, Lebel noted that many young people carry student debt and most manage to pay it down without committing crimes.
More police than protestors in London
Tuition rally fizzles
Outside the LSX. By Paul Robertson on Flickr.
Despite having 4,000 police ready in case the protest got out of hand, Scotland Yard says that only about 2,500 protesters showed up for a mass rally against high tuition fees in London, U.K. Organizers, on the other hand, told Sky News that 10,000 showed up, though they hoped more would have joined. After all, more than 50,000 marched with the same demands in the summer, during which protesters smashed the windows of the Conservative party’s headquarters.
At today’s protest, students carried placards denouncing the government’s policy that allowed tuition fees to rise to $14,500 at many schools. Some showed their middle finger as they passed the London Stock Exchange. Twenty were arrested by 4 p.m. local time, police told The Telegraph.
Police had warned on Monday that they would use rubber bullets and batons if necessary to quell violent protesters. Twitter users blamed police intimidation for the lower-than-expected turnout.
Is the U.S. tuition system more progressive?
Why Canadian students graduate with more debt, not less
Too much debt? Photo by Zach Klein on Flickr.
Canadians are graduating with more debt than their American counterparts—despite the well-known higher sticker prices south of the border.
In the U.S., average debt at graduation rose to $25,250 in 2010, according to a Nov. 3 report by the Project on Student Debt. Here in Canada, students were graduating with an average debt of $26,680 according to a 2009 report released by the Millennium Scholarship Foundation. If anything, the Canadian average is higher now.
The numbers seem almost impossible: isn’t tuition ridiculously high in the U.S.?
Continue reading Is the U.S. tuition system more progressive?
Obama offers students debt relief
News comes as study reveals rapidly growing tuition rates
Photo by feelsgoodlost on Flickr
As some American students continued their Occupy protests on Wednesday, President Barack Obama was being cheered by other students in Colorado where he announced he will speed up his initiatives to help students overcome debt.
“We should be doing everything we can to put college education within reach for every American,” the President said in what CNN describes as a “campaign-style event.”
Obama announced that a program to limit the repayment of federal student loan debt to 10 per cent of discretionary income will start next year, instead of the year after. And he said that students will be able to consolidate public and private loans to save on interest charges.
Foreigners flock to Norway for free tuition
But how long can it last?
University of Oslo photo by Josh Dehaas
Norway is one of the last remaining countries where foreign students can attend university without paying a cent of tuition money. But with free school increasingly rare, how long can it last?
Shocking as it may seem to many Canadians, Norweigians don’t charge any tuition to anyone—which was, until recently, normal in Scandinavia. Now, Denmark, Finland and Sweden all charge tuition fees, leaving Norway the only free option.
It should be unsurprising then to learn that foreigners are choosing Norway more often than ever. When non-European Union students were charged tuition fees for the first time this year in Sweden (up to $21,000 each), applications dropped 85 per cent. Meanwhile, Noway’s University of Oslo experienced a 60 per cent rise in popularity. Since 2008, the number of foreign students in Norway is up 27 per cent overall.
Continue reading Foreigners flock to Norway for free tuition
Do you know where your student fees are going?
Most student unions aren’t transparent about your cash
Angry about fees. Photo by DWallis on Flickr.
Details on student fees—that ever-growing list of mandatory payments tacked onto tuition bills, mainly by student unions—isn’t easy to find.
Students are often outraged when they do find out—often in their fourth year—that they’ve paid dozens of fees to causes they don’t support.
That’s why students at the University of Alberta recently offered a presentation called “Students’ Union Fees Used to Spread Hate,” during which the speakers argued that many students are unwittingly paying mandatory fees that go to the Alberta Public Interest Research Group, which supports the always-controversial—they say hateful—Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW).
Continue reading Do you know where your student fees are going?
How parental income can kill your student loans
Parents are expected to pay. But what if they can’t or won’t?
Photo by kenteegardin on Flickr
University of New Brunswick student Ben Whitney has a $5,000 hole in his budget this year thanks to the re-introduction of the parental contribution requirement for student loan funding in that province. He was loaned $8,000 last year, before the change. This year, the third-year student got just $3,000 because of what his parents—a middle manager and a secretary—took home last year from work. The 20-year-old’s parents are expected to make-up the difference. It’s money that Whitney says his parents don’t have this year.
But the issue of parental contributions, which he’s taken up with verve, means a lot more to him than sudden penury. “It’s also a matter of principle,” says Whitney. “As an adult, I shouldn’t have to depend on my parents until I’m 22,” he says. “It’s also a matter of pride to have to call my parents and ask, can you send me $20 so I can buy a bottle of shampoo?” he says. But he can’t afford such luxuries otherwise, even with a part-time job.
Continue reading How parental income can kill your student loans
Are young Canadians really better off than young Americans?
Why our leaders shouldn’t dismiss the Occupy Movement
Occupy Winnipeg photo by marygkosta on Flickr
Jamie Weinman has a post on Maclean’s.ca suggesting that student debt is fuelling the Occupy Everywhere protests. Weinman quotes this Washington Post article by Ezra Klein who writes that “college debt represents a special sort of betrayal.” He says he began supporting the protests after seeing a photo on the Tumblr site, “We are the 99 percent.” It was of a handwritten sign by a student that said: “I did everything I was supposed to and I have nothing to show for it.”
Their point is this. While many of the people hurt by the financial crisis should have known better—people who took out mortgages they knew they couldn’t afford and bankers who invested in financial instruments they knew were overrated—students who took on debt are different. They went into debt because they had been told repeatedly by parents, teachers, politicians and the media that educational debt is a sure route to higher paying jobs. Now that we know that’s often untrue, can we really blame them for being angry?
Continue reading Are young Canadians really better off than young Americans?
Sask. NDP commit to tuition freeze
Premier Brad Wall says tuition freezes are bad policy
Photo by waferboard on Flickr
The Saskatchewan NDP are promising a tuition freeze for in-province students at SIAST and the two universities if elected on Nov. 7.
They’re being praised for the promise by the University of Regina Students Union. “There are a lot of up front financial costs that students face other than tuition, so if we can grab one of those costs and sort of manage it and freeze it then students will be able to allocate their funds and better prepare for the upcoming years of study,” VP-External Paige Kezima told the Leader-Post.
But the tuition freeze is just one part of an extensive—some say, expensive—post-secondary plan announced Monday by NDP leader Dwain Lingenfelter. The party also pledged that they would expand student aid in the province, including raising the family income ceiling for eligibility for student aid and a commitment to 100 extra bursaries for graduate students. In addition, the NDP say they will build 1,000 new student housing spaces and fund 10,000 additional seats at universities and colleges. That last pledge has an estimated cost of $88-million over four years, according to the NDP. They estimate the tuition freeze would cost $26-million by year four.
