Deregulating tuition fees diminishes access to education

To the Editor:

Re: "Deregulating UTM fees?" Feb. 25/02

The Medium's story, "Deregulating UTM fees?" (Feb. 25) correctly noted that despite recent media attention to the policy of deregulating tuition fees, the policy is not new. Tuition fees for graduate, post-diploma, and professional programs were first deregulated by the Ontario government in 1998. Since then, tuition fees for many of these programs have doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled.

The Ontario government deregulated tuition fees, removing limits to increases, precisely because it is neglecting its responsibility to fund post-secondary education adequately. Since delivering its devastating $400 million cut to colleges and universities in 1996, the Ontario government has re-invested little. In fact, Ontario currently has the lowest per capita funding for post-secondary education in all of Canada.

Proponents of deregulation argue that students in deregulated programs aremore "marketable" upon graduation and thus, should pay more. Of course, high future earnings do nothing to improve the sticker price of higher education and thus, accessibility. Proponents also argue that higher tuition fees ensure quality. Simply put, this claim is false. Ontario, for example, has the second highest tuition fees and the worst student-professor ratios in the country.

The complicity of university administrators in advancing arguments supportive of deregulation is telling. By acquiescing to the government's policy of deregulating tuition fees, administrators have reduced themselves to institutional fundraisers and apologists for the selling off of public education by stealth. That universities must "set aside" one-third of tuition fees for bursaries and scholarships speaks to the need for a broader, provincial program of up-front, needs-based grants. Forcing students into debt to fund their own student aid is logically flawed and fundamentally inequitable.

At a time when Canada is facing a shortage of one million skilled workers by 2020, one would think that our governments would re-invest in post-secondary education and make accessibility a priority. Instead, governments and administrators have allowed tuition fees to skyrocket. At the same time, it has been proven that students from middle and lower income backgrounds are gradually disappearing from post-secondary education. Unless Ontario students unite and swiftly take collective action, we will be facing the same attacks as students in British Columbia, where the government just announced its intention to fully deregulate all tuition fees.

R. Telfer