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Originally Posted by xzmattzx
Nice pictures. Do all 250,000 of these students pay their own tuition?
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Of course not... I'm in my last year of university, if I could guesstimate I'd say about 30% of them do? Maybe I just don't hang out with the less-fortunate ones.
What it seems to boil down to is the 'severity' of the increase (% wise), plus the fact every previous government has backed away from plans to raise fees. So while the planned increase would make tuition 75% more expensive (75% = 1625$) the student unions, and generally all of Quebec's left leaners (i.e. europe-style left) are calling for a freeze or simply free education.
The gap between these two proposals is pretty large, hence the anger.
For the record, I'm against the increase in theory but I support it here and now, because the debt situation in Quebec is pretty out of control. If we want to make education we'll have to re-arrange quite a few parametres. The argument from those against the rise are that we should cut elsewhere, but for the most part 'elsewhere' are heavily unionized sectors who simply won't accept cuts.
People have totally omitted from the debate how much cash is eaten up by having to pay interest rates on the debt.
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. There's a sense that the government is corrupt and that the students are having to take on this added financial burden to make up for the money that was squandered on inefficiency and their mafia buddies in that construction industry. We have the lowest tuition but also very high taxes, so it should be well funded but isn't due to a lack of competition in the political arena, as too often elections aren't determined on the merit of fiscal competency but on separatism vs. federalism and cultural concerns. This breeds mediocrity in true day to day governance and this is in part an expression of deep discontent with the provincial political situation. That, and students believe in preserving our more financially accessible model of education. They don't believe we should conform to the prices in other provinces just because, they say higher education funding should be a greater priority and money should be found through cutting out the massive number of wasteful inefficiencies in the bureaucracy.
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