The conflict between excellence and access has recently come to U of T’s law school after students became aware of a proposal to double tuition over the next few years. It brought forth much tension, debate and passionate interchange between faculty, administration and students. Formally, it came to an end yesterday.
U of T’s law school voted to implement their five-year plan yesterday, which will mean tuition increases to $22, 000 in the next five years. The next step will be to send it to the university’s provost for approval.
“There was time to process it, but there was no way to really be responding,” said second-year law student Leigh Salsberg of the rushed pace of the last two months “There was a lot of very hurried discussion towards the end.”
80 to 100 people packed a meeting room at the law school for an intense two and a half hour discussion covering accessibility, effects of tuition increase on students and diversity at the law school.
At the beginning of the meeting, it was suggested that it could be taken up after reading week, allowing more time for discussion. After the lengthy debate, which left a few people hanging on the cut speakers’ list, the majority seemed convinced. Staff and students voted to put the debate to an end and then voted 37 to 13 in favour of the proposition, with one abstention.
Although there was certainly some student support for the plan, students filled a room adjoining the meeting venue to show their opposition to the task force, applauding whenever a fellow classmate noted their worries that this increase in tuition would hold some future peers back.
Salsberg said the decision felt like a done deal from the beginning. “People mostly felt like it was proposed, and it was going to pass from the start.” Salsberg and other law school students found out about the tuition segment of the task force’s proposal along with the public when it was published in the media.
“We don’t know the impact on low-income people,” said political science professor Jennifer Nadowski. Students and faculty both for and against the task force expressed anxiety about access to university, when tuition will double over five years after having risen exponentially since 1998.
But dean Ron Daniels says the law school will remain accessible. “There is no risk,” he said. “[Applicants] will not be denied the ability to participate in the law school because of a lack of financial wherewithal. That is our mission. That is our core commitment.”
He also noted there are 40 tuition-free scholarships offered by the school and numerous bursaries and back-end debt relief.
Dissenters say such a rise in tuition would cause students to seek highly-paid employment, regardless of wishes to do community-focused law.
They are also worried about sticker shock, where students would decide not to come to the law school at first glance of the high tuition.
Law professor Martha Shaffer and third year student Jacob Glick wrote up a document entitled “Dissent from the Report of the Task Force on the Future of the Faculty of Law,” published in Appendix Two.
In it, they state: “High tuition levels present an often insurmountable barrier to students of modest financial means. They undermine the goal of ensuring that law schools are places of economic, ethnic, cultural and racial diversity as they make it more difficult for members of traditionally underrepresented groups to obtain a legal education.”
They continue later, “[W]e believe the legal profession as a whole will be adversely affected by the decision to increase tuition to such a dramatic degree.”
But those who supported the task force say it is necessary to ensure the university’s excellence.
Supporters said U.S. faculty pay rates are far higher than faculty pay in Canada, which undermines the law school’s ability to attract the best and the brightest.
Students were not happy with the task force’s decision to deal with accessibility by providing “back-end debt relief,” a program that would forgive loans for students taking a job salaried at $40, 000 or less.
This number was amended at the meeting, from $26, 000.
“I know that there has been tonnes of problems with the current back-end debt relief,” said Salsberg.
“It’s pretty worrisome to think that if it’s not good enough now, it’s not going to change enough by the time the increases are in place.”
Glick is worried that back-end debt relief would act like Employment Insurance, in which, as demand increases and funds decrease, criteria for eligibility are changed so that more people lose access to the service: “You’ve defined the process such that people who would otherwise be covered are not covered.” Likewise, this promised relief is subject to whether the money is available.
After another student brought up a similar concern, Daniels gave his word that the money would be made available. He also said that criteria of eligibility would be made explicit to applicants as they entered the program.
“We’re not going to commit to anything we can’t do,” he said later.
As for where the additional money would go, Daniels said, “It can give us the resources to put into faculty recruitment, student recruitment, improving the poverty law program and strengthening the library.”
A committee to address accessibility is stipulated in the plan of the task force, but, as one student pointed out, this committee should have been established five years ago, when tuition began increasing.
Said one student, summing up the concerns of many, “I think this document goes too far too fast.”
