College education not a right
Ryan Bromsgrove
Opinion Editor
Feb 08, 2012
It doesn’t matter how loud you yell, post-secondary education is not a right — and those who don’t advocate for it aren’t necessarily uninformed. It might just be that the reason they aren’t out there protesting with you is because they may disagree with the cause.
Protestors last week chanted, “Education is a right” as they marched around campus. I’m taking it to mean that post-secondary education should be free, a demand they also yelled out on a number of ocassions. The problem is it can’t be free. What they mean is that it should be entirely tax-funded.
But as it is right now, the provincial government already subsidizes a substantial percentage of your tuition, in line with the argument that having many college-degree-holders enriches the whole society. But it doesn’t pay for your entire tuition, because at the same time, a university degree is a personal investment in yourself and your future. You have to take some of the responsibility, because what you get out of it doesn’t entirely belong to those who funded it.
The demand for 100 per cent post-secondary funding reeks of self-entitlement and would require an unpopular substantial tax hike. This would penalize society at large for the benefit of the few going to college, and give them nothing in return. Through taxes, you fund the police, and you can call them if you need them. You fund healthcare, and can get help when you’re sick or injured. But if you fund some kid’s degree, you can’t phone him up and demand he answer questions based on his field. He’s not your personal Alex Trebek.
No one would argue that when you earn a degree in a particular country you must stay there. But if Canadian taxpayers fund your whole degree, they have every right to demand you never leave. And if you end up not working in your field, society wouldn’t claim the right to force you to. The protestors would essentially have everyone pay for students to screw around experimenting with no repercussions. There’s no 100 per cent return on the taxpayer’s investments, so there’s no justification for 100 per cent funding.
There’s a moral principle that more or less everyone can agree on: don’t take other people’s stuff. Nobody likes taxation, but we accept it on the condition that the stuff that is taken — hard-earned money — is spent on things that society can share in equally. If the public pays for your whole degree, the public owns your whole degree. If you want to own your degree, if you want the freedom to do with it as you like, you can’t demand we all take more of other people’s stuff to pay for it.
What is important, and what should be a right, is equality of access. But we have that. I’m a white male, and I realize that comes with a significant degree of privilege, but I was born far from rich. Yet thanks to student loans — available to anyone willing to apply — and thankless low-paying part-time jobs, I’m almost done, even with the admittedly shady mandatory non-instructional fees.
It’s true that some people will fall through the cracks, some are in worse situations than others and many don’t want the debt. And while that’s unfortunate, handing out post-secondary education is not the answer. Yes, I’ll be graduating with a hefty debt, but it’s debt I’m happy to pay off. The people of this province and this country have trusted that I’ll put their borrowed money to a good cause, and I intend to pay them back.
You can’t have it all, but that seems to be the mentality of the protestors. And what’s outright offensive is that they claimed to be fighting on behalf of all students, with an implicit assumption being that those who didn’t stand with them just didn’t know better. While I won’t speak for every student who didn’t attend, the laughter and murmurs that followed Thursday’s march were not all signs of ignorance. There are 30,000 undergrads on campus, and the march consisted of 60 students and Occupiers combined.
Yes, some of those 30,000 undergrads might well be uninformed, but not 29,940 of them. Those who want to protest tuition and fees may do so, but they may not claim to speak for all students with blatant disregard for the many who disagree profoundly with their cause when their numbers are below 0.2 per cent of the student population. Post-secondary education is not a right, and those of us who embrace the personal responsibility and pride of earning our own degree without demanding that taxpayers fund the whole thing are not all stupid, ignorant or under-informed. And it’s our university too.
Comments
That being said I’m pretty sure we can raise oil royalties. It would be nice not to have our birthright sold for a pittance.
Posted by Occupymypantshurrhurr on Feb 08, 2012
Agree a thousand times over. In fact, this is almost the exact discussion a group of fellow students and I had while the “protestors” marched through our building chanting.
Posted by amen on Feb 08, 2012
I tend to see those who want free post secondary education as uninformed of the world and how it should work; not those who oppose the notion.
Posted by Anonymous on Feb 10, 2012
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