Tag Archives: tuition fees

Three Takes on the Quebec Student Protest

Posted on June 4, 2012 | 6 Comments

1. The Students Versus the Banks

Considering that a loan of $28,000 paid back over 10 years will cost the student $42,563, federally chartered private banks are cashing a profit of $14,563. The plan to make repayment proportional to income will, certainly, let students pay less each month, but we know that the longer it takes, the more interest accumulates on the student debt.

The banks must salivate at the idea of this new niche for securitization of commercial paper backed by student loans that they cannot dispose of even if they are bankrupt, and are guaranteed by the government. For the banks, no risk, higher profits!

Jean-Pierre Lord, Social work student – UQAM
President of the local association of Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jacques PQ
Source: www.mediacoop.ca/blog/aqualith/11160

2. The Students Versus Les Autres

It is no secret that the supporters of the protest movement in Quebec are principally made up of people who are white, Francophone and sovereigntist. There are, of course, exceptions to that sweeping generalization, but one needs only to attend a rally to see the copious Quebec flag waving and chants for independence to really get a taste for one of the many underpinnings of the movement.

Supriva Dwivedi, Law student, Université de Montréal
Source: Huffington Post Canada, June 2

3. The Two Solitudes and Bill 78

On May 19, on the morning after Premier Jean Charest’s government passed its controversial anti-protest Bill 78, a Montreal anglophone named Anna woke up to coverage in English-language media that struck her as being totally out of tune with the reality in the province.

“Le Devoir had this editorial in which the entire editorial staff of the newspaper expressed their formal condemnation of the law,” she said this week. “Then we looked at the English media and found a bunch of defences of a law we think is repugnant.”

The moment crystallized a difference she’d noted all the way along, in outlets that included the Montreal Gazette, the CBC and The Globe and Mail: here were the two solitudes, manifest in divergent coverage of the same event. “A lot of us had personally been witnessing the police violence against protesters, and we were reading the English media that was always reporting that students were attacking the cops, and the cops were just responding the way they had to,” said Anna. (She didn’t want to give her last name, in part because she fears the reach of Bill 78.)

Simon Houpt, What the Printemps Erable Really Means, The Globe and Mail, June 3

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In the U.S., for the First Time Ever, the Majority of the Unemployed have Attended Some College

Posted on May 31, 2012 | 5 Comments

Matthew O’Brien explains the situation in Atlantic Online (May30):

This [chart] is not as bad as it looks, and it doesn’t mean what you might think.

Here are the three numbers that tell us why: 7.9, 7.6 and 4.0. Those are the unemployment rates among people 25 and older for high-school grads, for college dropouts, and for college graduates – all courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The chart isn’t a story about a college degree no longer paying off. It is a story about more people going to college, but not nearly as many more people finishing college. As my colleague Jordan Weissmann recently pointed out, only 56 percent of those who start on a bachelor’s degree finish within six years. Only 29 percent of those who start on a associate’s degree finish within three years. And consider that this is happening while college enrollment is at an all-time high. Too many students are getting the worst of both worlds: debt without a degree. Their finances get worse, but their job prospects don’t get much better. That’s how we get a world where most of the unemployed have attended at least some college.

But there’s something of a chicken-and-egg problem here. More students would finish school if they could afford it. That’s certainly not the only reason our college dropout rate is so high, but it’s certainly one of the reasons.

In other words, the high cost of college is disguising the payoff of college. There still aren’t many better long-term investments than a college degree. Graduates have lower unemployment. They earn more. And the gap between what college and high school graduates make is only growing. But you know what they say about the long-run. It can be awfully hard to get there when the short-run costs are so high. That’s why reining in college tuition is so critical. It will both help young graduates struggling with the terrible economy, but also help more people become young graduates.

Of course, it’s not obvious how we can do this. If we knew, we’d be doing it. But it’s worth remembering: That’s how you win the future.

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