All Posts Tagged With: "tuition"

What students are talking about today (April 10th)

MSVG/Flickr

1. Alex Harris, a student at the University of Waterloo, and his dog Molson are calling themselves the “Geese Police.” The pair are patrolling the southern Ontario campus twice daily. Molson, a border collie-golden retriever cross, disperses the nuisance birds while Harris takes notes for his undergraduate thesis project. Canada Geese dominate the university’s campus, making a big a mess and scaring humans while trying to defend their territory. During mating season they get especially aggressive. It’s such a commonly discussed problem that the university’s bookstore now sell t-shirts that read, “I survived nesting season.” See CBC News for more.

2. Today is International Day of Pink, which means students everywhere are showing their opposition to bullying, homophobia and other discrimination by wearing, you guessed it, pink. It was started after high school students in Nova Scotia to support a pink-loving gay student who was bullied. It has high profile support from the likes of Rick Mercer and the Day of Pink Gala in Ottawa will be attended by former governor general Michaëlle Jean and radio host Jian Ghomeshi.

Continue reading Waterloo’s Geese Police, Day of Pink & McGillLeaks

BMO: degree for child born in 2013 could cost $140,000

The cost of a four-year university degree for a child born in 2013 could rise to more than $140,000 due to tuition inflation, a new study says.

But three-quarters of parents with children under 18 haven’t made a detailed estimate of the total cost of post-secondary education, said BMO’s Wealth Institute in a report released on Wednesday.

Tuition and other costs for a four-year university degree now can cost more than $60,000, the report said.

“I think that for most people if you tell them that tuition has increased two or three times the rate of inflation they will be surprised at that,” said BMO’s Caroline Dabu.

This can leave parents unprepared for the costs and students with hefty loans to pay back when they graduate, Dabu said from Toronto.

Continue reading Parents unprepared for soaring university costs

Bottles and chunks of ice thrown at police

People who thought they’d seen the last of the nighttime protests in Montreal streets against tuition fee increases heard the familiar drone of police helicopters over the city core Tuesday night as the noctural gnashing of teeth by students over the cost of their education was renewed, boiling over into a battle with police.

Montreal’s first nighttime tuition-fee protest in several months was almost a mirror image of the demonstrations that filled the city’s streets last year. The biggest change was that protesters were chanting against Premier Pauline Marois instead of Jean Charest, who also tried to jack up tuition when he was premier.

And like some of last year’s marches, Tuesday night’s protest ended with the crash of breaking plate glass splitting the night, the scream of police sirens and the clatter of batons against riot shields as police charged the thousands of demonstrators.

It was the second repudiation in a week of Marois’ declaration that student unrest had been put to rest.

Social peace was one of the Parti Quebecois premier’s campaign platforms in last year’s provincial election and she declared mission accomplished at the conclusion of a summit on education last week. That was where she also announced her government would increase fees by three per cent, which was less than the Liberals.

Students protested after the summit and Tuesday night they were out in force again, this time rekindling the nighttime march which was a fixture of last year’s student unrest. Most were peaceful, but some of those marches turned violent and led to mass arrests.

The call for Tuesday’s march summed up that little had changed from the marches of the past.

Continue reading At least 53 arrested at Quebec tuition protest

Man, 29, accused of possessing explosives, threats

A man arrested on a terrorism-related charge during a student protest this week in Quebec will remain behind bars for now.

Denis Marc Pelletier was in a Montreal courtroom Thursday for what was supposed to have been a bail hearing, but the case did not proceed as planned.

A new lawyer and evidence disclosure pushed the bail hearing back to at least March 8, and perhaps later.

The Crown has already indicated that it will oppose bail in Pelletier’s case due to the nature of the charges against him.

The 29-year-old man is facing at least seven charges, including possession of explosives, possession of an arson device and uttering threats.

A charge of inciting terrorism stems from alleged postings on a social media site that police observed last weekend.

Continue reading Quebec protester faces terrorism-related charge

Anarchists, arrests, riot police and plenty of red squares

Montreal freelance reporter Justin Ling snapped these photos of Tuesday’s anti-tuition protest in Montreal where 13 were arrested. To learn more about the debate in Quebec, check out this report from The Canadian Press and read Ling’s commentary on Premier Marois’ missed opportunity.

Quebec premier says confrontations are “behind us”

Arrested during demonstration (Graham Hughes/CP)

Without the salvos of snowballs pelting police, the chunks of ice flying through the air, and the officers chasing protesters across a snowy plaza, this could easily have been a scene lifted from the “Maple Spring.”

The clash in downtown Montreal was a mid-winter twist on the student demonstrations that shook the city on a near-daily basis last spring and summer.

Thousands of people marched through the streets Tuesday in a protest that coincided with the end of Quebec’s summit on higher education.

This time, protesters were venting at a different government.

The two-day summit saw the newly elected Parti Quebecois announce three-per-cent-a-year tuition hikes. The PQ’s new fees are significantly lower than the ones proposed by the previous Liberal government — about one-fifth as much.

Premier Pauline Marois had left the conference feeling confident enough to declare that Quebec’s era of social unrest was over.

“We have succeeded in putting the confrontations behind us,” Marois said in the closing address of a Montreal summit that assembled students’ associations, university leaders, unions and social groups.

“The social crisis is behind us.”

A few hours later, signs of the familiar tumult re-emerged.

On the other side of town, armoured police confronted projectile-throwing protesters in a sequel to the clashes that drew international attention last year.

The demonstration blocked streets, altered bus routes and saw police drag some marchers out of the crowds in order to arrest them.

The skirmishes led to 13 arrests, mostly for unlawful assembly and assault with a weapon. Two of those arrested were carrying Molotov cocktails, police said.

The police department said one officer was injured.

Last year, Quebec’s first student strikes of began in mid-February and they grew into a social movement that saw nightly street marches.

At issue was the $1,625 tuition increase over five years planned by the previous Liberal government.

The PQ cancelled the Liberals’ hikes after it won power in September and this week it announced scaled-down increases of its own. Its proposed hike will raise tuition by one-fifth of the Liberal plan — $70 per year, or roughly $350 after the first five years.

Earlier in the day, Marois had conceded that her small tuition hikes wouldn’t please everyone — not the student groups, nor the university administrators who said they needed more cash.

“We had some difficulties (finding a consensus) with the tuition, but the responsibility of the government is to decide — and I decided,” Marois told reporters after the summit.

Even the more moderate student groups, who participated in the summit, called the three-per-cent annual increases unacceptable.

They had requested an absolute freeze on tuition. Instead, they got what some of them called a perpetual tuition hike.

“We’re really disappointed about the fact the tuition fees are going up,” said Martine Desjardins, president of Quebec’s largest student federation, who attended the summit.

She said she had hoped the government would have debated the issue further.

But students, Desjardins added, did not leave the summit empty-handed. She credited the government with providing some extra funds for the financial-aid program and establishing a committee to examine mandatory student fees.

Student leaders will now consult their members about the next step.

The march Tuesday in Montreal, meanwhile, was the first of more student protests expected in the province. The movement is planning to stage nightly demonstrations starting next week.

It’s not yet clear how many student groups, and protesters, will participate in the demonstrations.

Thousands hit the streets Tuesday in a march organized by ASSE, one of Quebec’s more-radical student federations.

The group boycotted the education summit and has long demanded free university tuition.

“We will not cease mobilizing, we will not cease demonstrating, we will not cease these actions,” Jeremie Bebard-Wien, a spokesman for ASSE, said of Tuesday’s protest.

“We will keep coming back to remind the government that the summit was not what we expected and that a tuition hike will not pass.”

He predicted that it would take time, however, for the movement to gain steam again.

While his group said 50,000 students agreed to a one-day strike Tuesday, those at some schools with a reputation for militancy actually voted to stay in class.

Inside the tight security bubble that shielded the summit, students weren’t the only ones who disagreed with the PQ government’s plans for the education system.

Some university administrators left the long-awaited event with deep concerns their schools are at risk of under-funding, due to a cut in their budgets by $125 million in 2012-13 and again in 2013-14.

“The university system remains anaemic and it will be bled of $250 million in the coming years,” Universite de Montreal rector Guy Breton told the summit.

Breton warned of a looming crisis that could imperil some university programs — including medicine — unless the government increases university funding.

“The patient is far from being in good health — I guarantee that,” he said.

Others saw the PQ government’s indexed tuition increases as too small, a plan that would pile more burden on taxpayers who didn’t go to university.

“You’ve obtained an artificial consensus… in this room where the vast majority is excluded,” said interim Liberal leader Jean-Marc Fournier, who then pointed to the challenges of lower-earning Quebecers.

“You’re asking (students) to pay a little less, someone else will pay instead.”

In an abrupt reversal of roles compared to 2012, it was the PQ government dealing with uproar in the streets.

While she was Opposition leader, Marois wore the student movement’s signature red square in the national assembly and even took part in a pot-banging protest that became commonplace in the province.

One marcher held up a sign Tuesday that read: “Pauline, where’s your casserole (pot)?”

During the closing news conference of the summit, Marois was asked about her declaration that social harmony had been restored.

“I’m very at ease telling you that the divisions are now behind us,” she said.

“That doesn’t mean that there isn’t any tension; that doesn’t mean that there won’t be any disagreements.”

—Andy Blatchford with files from Peter Rakobowchuk

Scenes from the demonstration (#manifencours)

To read about today’s Quebec education summit, click here.

Plan would raise fees by $70 per year

Premier Marois and Education Minister Duchesne at the summit (Paul Chiasson/CP)

Quebec students who staged a memorable series of protests last spring could see their efforts result in a roughly 80 per cent discount on planned tuition hikes.

The Parti Quebecois government has tabled its plan for tuition increases, a long-awaited development in a political dispute that rocked Quebec last year and was dubbed by students as the Maple Spring.

The plan involves indexing university tuition by three per cent a year — which amounts to about $70 annually. That is sharply lower than the $325 yearly hikes sought by the previous Liberal government, which then adjusted the proposed increases to $254 per year, over seven years.

The planned hikes prompted huge and often rowdy protests, with the PQ siding with the student protesters ahead of last summer’s election campaign.

Premier Pauline Marois then cancelled the Liberal tuition increases after taking power.

Continue reading Parti Quebecois proposes tuition indexation

Student group says there won’t be second ‘Maple Spring’

Not even the most militant of Quebec’s student federations expects this week’s education summit to plunge the province into another Maple Spring.

Quebec gained international attention last year when a dispute over proposed tuition hikes boiled into a months-long uprising.

The unrest, dubbed the Maple Spring, saw thousands of protesters swarm Montreal streets night after night. The crisis eventually faded away, in part because the Liberals lost power and the incoming Parti Quebecois government cancelled the tuition increases.

The PQ stickhandled its way through the perilous political issue, during the election, by promising to come up with a new tuition policy at an education summit.

Some students are feeling disillusioned and boycotting the two-day summit, which starts Monday, because they believe the new government has tuned out some of their ideas.

The ranks of the restive, however, appear smaller than last year.

“We are aware… that there will not be a new Maple Spring,” said Blandine Parchemal of the ASSE student federation, one of the more militant groups within the movement.

“The Maple Spring is over.”

The once-powerful ASSE, led by its charismatic former spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, suffered several setbacks last week after it failed to gather support on a strike vote from a number of its associations.

The most symbolic setback came at a college near Montreal known as a bastion of activism, which was the first school to declare a strike last February in an event that kicked off the movement.

This time, College de Valleyfield not only voted against the strike, it tabled a motion to disassociate itself from ASSE.

That doesn’t mean the tuition divide between students and the government has disappeared.

One of the major sticking points is the PQ government’s intention to freeze rates, which are the lowest in Canada, but to introduce small increases indexed to inflation.

Some student federations that made up last year’s protest movement have drawn a line in the sand at an absolute tuition freeze.

They say they refuse to accept indexation.

ASSE, meanwhile, decided to boycott the summit completely over the government’s refusal to debate the group’s desire for zero tuition.

They view free university as an achievable goal, if only policy-makers would make it a priority like in many other jurisdictions. Former premier Jacques Parizeau, who as a young civil servant in the 1960s helped build the province’s university network, expressed support for their cause.

The federation is now planning to take its battle back into the streets. ASSE has planned to stage a protest Tuesday outside the summit venue.

With memories of last year’s clashes with demonstrators, Montreal police pledge to be present in large numbers and will maintain a security perimeter around the summit’s building.

Student associations representing junior colleges and universities affiliated with ASSE have also voted to hold a one-day strike on Tuesday.

But any protest revival from within ASSE faces an uphill climb. Several of its member unions voted last week against the strike, including those from some of the most militant schools during last year’s uprising.

“There’s a lot of exhaustion,” said Parchemal, ASSE’s secretary of academic affairs. She was referring to the compressed, intensive academic schedules students have had to endure after the 2012 strikes cancelled sessions.

She maintained, however, that the associations that voted against the strike still oppose indexation and support free tuition. Parchemal added that some schools that voted against strikes last year, actually supported the most recent one.

That stood in contrast to places like College de Valleyfield — where the vote was 366 against the strike and 124 in favour of it, said a student-union representative.

“We didn’t expect to be crushed like that,” said Cedrick Mainville, himself a supporter of the strike.

He blamed the loss on student fears that a Yes vote would lead to a prolonged strike like last year.

ASSE’s approach is much different than that of FEUQ, the largest student group in the province. The organization, which says it represents 125,000 students, plans to take its concerns to the summit’s negotiating tables rather than into the streets.

FEUQ president Martine Desjardins believes the student movement still has many potential avenues to explore before presenting a strike vote.

“Before that, you need to prove that you’ve tried everything that you could,” said Desjardins, who led FEUQ during last year’s protests.

When asked if students in her federation would be prepared to strike over indexation, she said it’s too early to know.

“We’re not planning strikes, for example, in two weeks,” she said. “It will take much more time to convince students to ramp up the pressure.”

Desjardins disagrees with ASSE’s decision to boycott the summit, a step she believes could hinder the process.

Last year’s student unrest was ignited by opposition to the Liberal government’s proposal to boost tuition rates by $325 per year, over five years. The government later tweaked the planned increases to $254 per year, over seven years.

Even though the hike still would have left Quebec with some of the lowest tuition in Canada, many students insisted they opposed the increase out of principle.

Some demanded a freeze to keep fees from inching closer to the higher rates in other provinces. Others called education a right that should be free, just like in some European countries.

The Marois government appears to be aiming for the middle ground with indexation, somewhere between a freeze and the increases proposed by the former Liberal government.

A recent poll suggested the PQ’s middle-ground indexation solution had strong public support.

That’s a far cry from the spring, when the PQ’s early alignment with the protesters — such as wearing red squares in the national assembly and banging on pots and pans in the streets — came to be viewed as a political liability.

But the PQ did take some steps to try distancing itself from the protesters in the weeks before the election.

It ditched the red squares, and started side-stepping questions about its own tuition policy by promising a summit.

Now that the moment has arrived, university administrators worry the meeting won’t address the serious issues they say are facing post-secondary institutions.

Relations between the PQ and the universities are already strained after the government announced a $124-million cut to universities in December, midway through the fiscal year.

Universities have gone on the offensive in the lead-up to the summit. At one of a series of town hall meetings, McGill University’s provost called the cuts “an unprecedented attack” on higher education.

Alan Shepard, president of Montreal’s Concordia University, said he’s concerned the summit will get bogged down in the debate over tuition fees and proposals like that one won’t see serious discussion.

Even with an increase tied to inflation, Quebec universities would remain woefully underfunded, he said.

“The difference is substantial when you compare the financing we have per student compared with the rest of Canada,” he said in an interview.

One idea being floated by Shepard and others is to introduce differential fees based on the subject, so that a student in dentistry or law school would pay substantially more than a history student.

If the funding issue isn’t somehow addressed, Shepard said Montreal risks losing what he called an “enormous jewel” – a hub for research and student learning at its four major universities.

Universite de Montreal rector Guy Breton said post-secondary institutions now realize they need to do a better job explaining their role. Last spring, he felt they were drowned out in a debate dominated by students and the government.

“The student message was two letters — n-o,” he said.

“Ours is much more complicated.”

—Andy Blatchford and Benjamin Shingler

Anti-tuition argument never made sense to me

shahk/Flickr

Canada and the United States are broadly similar nations mostly separated by public policy. Last year’s tuition debate in Quebec shined a spotlight on not only the difference in education policy between the two countries, but also on the “Two Solitudes” cultural gap between English Canada and Quebec.

As an American studying at McGill University, I have a unique perspective on the tuition debate, which is sure to flare up again next week during a provincial summit on higher education.

The average price of an American college education has continued to rise, with tuition at four-year private universities now averages $29,056. Ancillary fees like room and board add about an extra $10,000. Similar increases have occurred at public universities. In Canada, the average tuition is $5,581 a year. In Quebec it’s $2,168.

That difference may create sticker shock for Canadians, but in the U.S., unlike Canada, most students receive substantial needs-based subsides that reduce the ‘actual’ average tuition at private universities to just under $13,000. A great redistribution of money from richer to poorer students in the U.S. leads to average student debts that are surprisingly comparable in the two countries.

I had the misfortune of encountering the Quebec tuition debate very quickly after the start of my first year. Still acclimating to the new and somewhat colder environment, I read of the controversy in the campus papers. The sticking point was the former Liberal government’s planned increase of $1,625 over five years for an eventual total of over $3,000. Despite the hike being only $325 each year, the proposal stirred passions. A general strike was called and, at its height, protests numbering in the thousands were a near-nightly occurrence, especially after the passage of the highly controversial Law 78, which restricted demonstrations.

As an American used to far more expensive university tuition—even international rates at McGill were substantially lower than those at several of the universities I considered in the States—the anti-hike argument did not speak to me on either an individual or ideological level.

Continue reading Quebec tuition: the view from an American at McGill