I sympathize wholly with Brittany Steel, the low-income, first-generation university student at MacEwan. As a kid from a working-class family with six children and no money in the bank, I was always a bit leery about my parents' insistence that we all had to go to university. University tuition in the mid-1960s was a smaller fraction of average household income than it is now. But when a family's income is far lower than the average, and there are no savings despite the fact that the family spends nothing on anything beyond necessities--no one in our household smoke, drank, or gambled, and we did not go anywhere on vacations--the prospects of paying tuition fees and costs for books and transportation seem daunting. So, although I had the highest grades in my school for several years, I figured that my parents' goals for me were a pipe dream. Fortunately, I landed a scholarship and a well-paying part-time job from a large industrial association in grade 10--it was a Horatio Alger story. Four of my five siblings also managed to attend university. But I knew fellow students who simply could not go on to post-secondary studies because their families needed them to bring in an income.
Brittany's situation is more precarious than mine was because, as an out-of-towner, she has rent and food to pay for which I didn't. She correctly notes that, as tough as she had it or that my fellow students had it, it is going to be tougher for future students. They will be paying far more for tuition than she had to pay during the NDP years of tuition freezes. They will be stuck with even higher debts after graduation than past students. And the cuts at the universities will mean fewer services for struggling students and larger classrooms with less individualized contact during and after classes with instructors. Fewer will be able to graduate.
A more educated workforce everywhere leads to greater economic productivity, greater economic equality, and better social statistics overall. There's lots of academic literature that demonstrates this with quantitative and qualitative data. But what do the UCP care? As long as their corporate funders are happy, what do they care if the hopes and dreams of future Alvin Finkels or Brittany Steels from low-income households are stolen? What do they care if a province that they intend to leave with stranded assets and no economic diversification has a highly educated workforce?
'This is our future': Students, NDP urge government to reverse post-secondary funding cuts
The night before the MacEwan board of governors will consider hiking tuition fees by 9.7 per cent, Edmonton post-secondary students and the NDP called on the UCP government to reverse funding cuts …
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