By Gabe Hoogers, Opinions Contributor
Last Friday, after eight months of anticipation and $95,000 of government funding, former Bank of Montreal economist Tim O’Neill released his Report on the Nova Scotia University System. The report, commissioned by the Nova Scotia government, relies heavily on debunked theories about tuition fees and their impact on access to education to justify the complete de-regulation of tuition fees in the province.
According to O’Neill, the path to an equitable university system is through higher fees and higher debt. It doesn’t take a PhD to understand the absurdity of such an approach.
Currently, average undergraduate tuition fees in Nova Scotia are $5,495. That’s $357 above the national average. Nova Scotia graduate students pay the highest tuition fees in the country, at a staggering $7, 350.
Students in Nova Scotia paid the highest tuition fees for 20 years until last fall which resulted in an average student debt of nearly $30,000, the highest in the country. According to a 2010 Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission (MPHEC) report, of those Maritimes students who borrowed more than $30,000, 21 per cent still owed at least that amount five years after graduation.
The central recommendation contained in O’Neill’s 188 page report is that the provincial government lift the current three-year tuition fee freeze. The report advocates for the complete de-regulation of tuition fees, thus letting each university set their own fees with no government control. We need only look to the sky-high fees paid by international students and those in medicine, dentistry, law and engineering to see the negative affects de-regulation could have. To pay for these fee increases the report recommends that the amount of money a student can borrow through the student loans program be increased, or even unlimited.
In an NDP e-newsletter sent out just hours after the release, Premier Dexter called O’Neill’s recommendations “innovative and strategic.” There is nothing innovative about O’Neill’s recommendations to de-regulate tuition fees and increase student loan limits.
In 2005, former Ontario Premier Bob Rae produced a review that recommended de-regulating tuition fees and targeted and increased financial aid. The Ontario government used the Rae Review to justify ending a two-year tuition fee freeze and allowing fees to increase between 4.5 and 8 per cent, per year. As a result, Ontario now boasts the highest tuition fees in the country.
O’Neill uses three major arguments to justify de-regulation and tuition fee hikes. He argues that high fees have moderate to no impact on low-income participation in post-secondary education, that low fees serve as a subsidy to students from high-income backgrounds, and that the individual benefit of a university degree far outweighs the cost.
Students have heard, and discredited, these myths before. There is plenty of research both nationally and here on the East Coast that directly contradicts both O’Neill and Dexter’s assertion that high fees and high loans somehow improve access.
According to the Canadian Association of University Teachers, youth aged 18-24 with parents earning more than $100,000 were almost twice as likely to have been enrolled in university than those whose parents earning $25,000.
A 2007 study from the Maritimes Provinces Higher Education Commission states that “tuition fees seem to influence students’ choice of institution. This appears to be an important factor explaining the increasing number of Maritimers studying at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.” Students in Newfoundland and Labrador pay the lowest tuition fees in the country. Tuition fees in that province have been frozen and reduced since 1999, and are currently just over half of those in Nova Scotia.
The government may control the provincial purse-strings, but students have two important tools in the fight for accessible post-secondary education in Nova Scotia: public opinion and our strength in numbers.
In a recent national Harris Decima poll, 90 per cent of Atlantic Canadians said that they supported either a freeze or reduction in tuition fees; that’s the highest percentage in the country. Governments ignore groups that pose no political threat to them, but by working together, students have been able to win many important victories at both the provincial and national level, including our current tuition fee freeze.
So arm yourself with arguments against the ‘high-tuition fees, high student loan’ model proposed by O’Neill. Spread the word; write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper. Get involved in the campaign to make post-secondary education a priority in this province; sign the petition to increase funding and grants and reduce tuition fees.
Because education is a right, and we can’t afford to give up the fight.
Gabe Hoogers is the Nova Scotia Representative of the Canadian Federation of Students. The Federation is Canada’s largest students’ organization, uniting more than 500,000 university and college students from all ten provinces.
Editor’s Note: Katie Toth is the Women’s Representative of the CFS-NS Executive.
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