CFS and Tuition

With all of the hullabaloo from the Canadian Federation of Students this week regarding the costs of education:
CFS - Media

From St. John’s to Victoria, thousands of students and other Canadians are participating in rallies and events as part of the Canadian Federation of Students’ campaign for affordable, high-quality post-secondary education.

I would like to point out that a recent study conducted by Statistics Canada has pointed out that the cost of education is not the barrier that many people believe it is. It is more likely, according to the study

"school marks reported at age 15, parental influences, and high-school quality account for 84 per cent the gap"

Only 12 percent of the "gap" (between the prospects of lower and higher income high school student for university education) is attributable to income. So, this tells me that the "size of your wallet" as the national chairperson of the CFS calls it, is not really that much of a factor when it comes to ensuring equal access to university education. So, with this survey, it is now up to the CFS to argue why public dollars ought to spent on lowering tuition.

On the face of it, there would seem to be little marginal gain in investing money in lower tuition fees when that money could be spent on any number of the following things that would likely achieve the putative aims of the CFS more effectively than by reducing tuition:

• Educating lower income high school students about budgeting and the true costs of higher education,
• Ensuring that lower income high school students are more likely to succeed,
• Creating a national or uniform provincial standard of high school education regardless of neighbourhood,
• Educating middle and upper income families about the importance of trades and non-university post-secondary employment [I think a survey of lower and upper income families will show that the progeny of upper income families are under represented in non-university employment], and
  
• Educating parents of lower income families about the true possibilities of university education.

My suspicions are that the CFS will not respond to this survey by answering any of these questions. Instead I think it will try to discredit the survey in the hopes of lowering tuition to a point where demand far surpasses supply or the capacity of society to absorb all of the high expectations of university graduates. The CFS in my experience is predisposed to pointless political agitation and not at all concerned with practical public (and personal) parsimony.


Technorati Tags: Canadian Federation of Students, tuition, university, education, equality, politics, Canada

powered by performancing firefox