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Students Rally For Lower Tuition, By-Elections Today In The GTA, And If You Wanted A Million-Dollar Coin We’ve Got Good News For You

By Christopher Bird

student-cp-141656.jpg Thousands of college and university students rally across Canada for lower tuition fees and greater education funding. FUN FACT:This is approximately the 17th or so national day of rallies for lower tuition fees and greater education that I have seen, and interestingly, tuition fees have never actually gone down during that time, but instead gone up steadily!
A Toronto man who slapped and allowed his elderly mother to lie in filth and squalor for days has been convicted of manslaughter in her death. This decision is one without precedent, which thus sets precedent, and so far as Torontoist is concerned, any decision that hopefully leads to less beatings of the elderly is one we should all be able to get behind.
If you live in the ridings of York South-Weston, Markham or Burlington, don’t forget to vote today. Your votes in these three by-elections could determine what observers and pundits say about the October provincial election for the next six to eight months – at which time you get to vote all over again! It is, truly, an awesome responsibility.
Royal Canadian Mint wants to stamp a $1 million coin. The coin would be made of gold, about the size of a pizza, and “extremely heavy.” (No, wait, a pizza-sized gold coin would be heavy? Surely they jest.)
Did sex play a role in last March’s ferry crash near Prince Rupert? Well, the federal Transportation Safety Board has heard that there might be hints of that, and apparently that was enough for the Star to rehash a story that’s nearly a year old with no other actual new developments. Because if sex is crashing ferries now, it may lead to dancing, and then we’re really screwed.
And Chris Bosh scores 41 points against the Orlando Magic as the Raptors make it four wins in a row.
Image via the CBC.

Comments

  • Mark Dowling

    A million dollar gold coin. What a waste of resources, energy to smelt it and tax dollars.

  • Adam C-F

    You may be correct that tuition fees haven’t been rolled back but in Quebec they’ve been frozen for about 35 years for students from Quebec so in real dollars they have gone down.
    The biggest disgrace is that Dalton McGuinty and the Boomer generation benefited from progressive social policy that ensured accessible post-secondary education but believe that this generation should be cut off.
    FAST FACT: Dalton McGuinty’s law school tuition was $600 per semester.

  • Gloria

    My boyfriend studies at Concordia and he’s said that while in Quebec the tuition has been frozen, miscellaneous academic fees are freely charged and hiked as desired, so according to him, it’s not entirely a rosy picture. And of course, out-of-province students are charged a premium on top of all that.

  • Adam C-F

    You’re right, Gloria. However, I believe that most of those ancilliary fees are applied illegally but the Charest government refuses to step in. I know that that’s the case with international student tuition fees at McGill.

  • The Jar

    So, low tuition is a good thing?
    Tuition was also frozen in Ontario for 2 years after McGuinty got elected.

  • The ETCB

    Mark: the coins are far from a waste. They’ll be a gold alloy, so the production cost will probably be somewhere around $400,000 – $500,000 a coin. They’ll sell out immediately because rich people like to buy stupid things like this, so they’ll make a profit. And the energy to smelt them isn’t going to be anything more than the energy normally used to smelt coins in general, so.

  • Hey

    De-regulated tuition is the second best thing. Getting our universities off of welfare and getting students to invest in their own education is the only way for our schools to catch up. UofT should be charging Harvard prices. The Law School made a good attempt at it, and that needs to be applied to everything. Much fewer people would waste a degree if they had to pay the full cost, and many more people would do somethign useful like math, science, engineering, or economics, rather than literature or women’s studies.

  • Gloria

    I would replace “useful” with “well-paid.” The study of literature and of women are arguably useful, but it is difficult to argue that they are sure paths to wealth and financial security.

  • Phill

    It depends entirely if you view education as a social service or not, on par with hospitals.
    I believe the argument goes that if we find it unfair that poor people are forced to be unhealthy (and thus probably earning even less income) because they cannot afford to get some healthcare, we should do similar things regarding education. If you are poor, you are less likely to get an education. Without an education you are more likely to be poorer. Vicious cycle.
    This of course focuses solely on the economic perspective. I personally find it inhumane, period, to sort a waiting list for surgery by the size of one’s bank account instead of by need.
    Similarly, I think that if you are intelligent and dedicated there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to pursue a field of choice. Higher learning is good for mankind, sort of thing. To encompass women’s studies, educated folks are usually capable, of drawing all sorts of insights that people without education can’t. Finally, I thought we had a shortage of highly educated doctors and workers in the first place.
    –
    What kinda hurt in that student rally were the kids from Trinity College holding out signs saying “Loans not Handouts”.
    It’s excruciatingly hard to pay any of those massive amounts back; it’s an enormous handicap to any new graduate. I don’t know, I guess I have loftier ideals concerning education.

  • Gloria

    Phill, I believe medicine also counts as “useful.” However, since subjects such as history or art or philosophy are perceived to result in no tangible value or service to many people, they are “useless.” It enrages many people that they’re subsidizing such degrees, because they believe they are not provided with any benefits. Useful degrees produce services … scientists find cures, engineers build bridges, and doctors mend people. What do a historian, artist, or philosopher do for them?

  • x_the_x

    I will trot out the old chestnut that 70% of CEOs in North America are BAs. The useful/useless distinction is not itself very useful and I suspect that Hey only raised it to get a rise out of the readership. As a short rebuttal, the economic incentives he proposes to steer people out of “useless” areas of study are already present: in the form of drastically reduced employment prospects for non-”useful” studies. Homo economicus would not study classics, full stop.
    Though I too, as a student, was wild-eyed and angry about having to pay for my education, I have become persuaded that the real equity with subsidized schooling is why are we investing large sums of public dollars in people who have the ability to pay. The professional schools which have de-regulated (and hugely increased) tuition are largely institution-funded for people who do not have the means to pay through bursuries, etc. Its a hell of a lot better for equality of opportunity than saddling these same students with loans.

  • a.

    Let’s not forget that in 1999, Manitoba reduced tuition fees by 10% and Newfoundland by 25% and their fees have been frozen ever since.
    McGuinty’s freeze was a good start, but it shouldn’t have come off. Ontario is one of the wealthiest provinces – our students shouldn’t have to be graduating with tens of thousands of dollars in debt.