I’m not
sure if I support Quebec students or not.
I like the idea of a good protest against government, if it’s for a good
cause. But on the other hand, I don’t
support the use of violence and certainly don’t appreciate the mob mentality
that’s resulted.
Whether I
support what the students are fighting for is questionable. I went to school in Saskatchewan about 12
years ago, where I grew accustomed to annual 5-6% hikes in tuition. That felt steep to me, although I was able to
keep my student loans to a minimum by living at home in the summer (no such
luxury while at school) and utilizing some savings my parents had arranged for
me (equalling about one year’s tuition).
My jobs in summer and two semesters of school ranged from $6 to around
$12 per hour and my rent while at school ranged from $300 to $400 per
month.
So add that
all together, and I made it out of university after five years (one year was
spent in a work co-op program) with $6,000 in student debt. It would have been closer to $12,000 without
my parents’ help. But that was also
without having a part-time job while studying, and included the cost of buying
a relatively expensive used car. I’ve
read the average debt load held by Canadian students is now $27,000.
This is despite
the fact that there have been considerable improvements to student loans, where
no-strings-attached grants are now provided up-front to students from low- and
middle-income families. Students of
low-income families can now receive up to $250 per month while in school;
students of middle-income families can receive $100 per month. That’s free money, helping those whose
parents don’t have the means to invest in RESPs. I suspect most Quebec student protesters come from fairly well-off families.
I also presume
that a good portion of student debt is related to increasing student living
standards. Kraft Dinner has likely been
replaced by steak and imported beer. It
can be terribly tempting to treat a loan as a cash windfall when you’ve never
had to manage money on your own before.
Why not, when many parents treat loans the same way?
This isn’t
to say that some of the debt students are facing can be crippling and necessary
to obtain an education. Or that the
current labour market (and housing market) is not creating additional pressures
for new graduates – I can certainly relate to that uncertainty when I was in my
20s. And I recognize it’s much worse
today.
But to say
that Quebec students are struggling is a bit of a stretch, when their tuition
is half that being paid by Saskatchewan students. According to Statistics Canada, average
tuition in Quebec is $2,500 per student, while in Saskatchewan its $5,600 per
student.
In Quebec,
many students feel that education is a right and should be free. While there
are definite public benefits to having an educated workforce, there are also
significant private benefits that accrue to the individual. What they neglect to account for is the
considerable personal benefit from obtaining a post-secondary education. The monetary benefits, I’ve read, equate to
$15,000 more per year in average salary.
Certainly, when one compares an unskilled job to one that requires an
education, the wage gap is even higher – I would guess it to be around $30,000.
A recent study
in Saskatchewan indicated that the increase in life-time earnings for First
Nations students who obtain a bachelor’s degree after completing high school is
$1.1 million. That’s a significant
increase.
But it’s more of a societal/cultural
issue than a money issue when it comes to bridging the aboriginal education
gap. While a lower tuition can help, it still
won’t create the desire to obtain an education, something that Quebec students
have shown they have in abundance.
Much to Premier Charest’s chagrin,
there’s no stopping them, even if it means giving up a semester of school. As an idealistic student, I probably would
have, too.
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