On 11 February 2002, the Varsity published a story by law student Brock Jones called “The regressive nature of low tuition.” In it, Jones argued that loan reform—specifically, Income Contingent Loans—would be a better option than the widely publicized tuition freeze that Canadian students demonstrated for February 6. Writer Juan Lira disagrees: “A law student promoting an aggressive fee increase, fully aware that his own future career protects him against the damaging effects of any loan repayment program, is being hypocritical.”
Mr. Jones brings the issue of tuition deregulation to the forefront with an interesting but erroneous point of view. In his recent article about loan reform, he proposes the implementation of a draconian policy through the introduction of an Income Contingent Loan (ICL) program. This allows for the total deregulation of tuition fees, and creates widespread unfairness and inequality for post-secondary students everywhere.
Contrary to what Mr. Jones would have us believe, fee increases are not “incredibly” progressive. It does not follow from his reasoning that higher tuition fees would bring about “a greatly improved lifetime earning prospect.” This view is preposterous. Mr. Jones does not provide proof that higher tuition fees have a direct relationship with the prospect of a better job.
Mr. Jones’ argument for the Income Contingent Loan program lies in the fact that repayment is distributed over one’s working life (very convenient for a high-earning law-degree graduate). But this repayment schedule becomes a policy to keep students in virtual lifelong economic slavery. Student graduates remain indebted to the government for the rest of their penurious lives, much like Third World countries to capitalist societies. Since the indebted students are the ones most in need to begin with, and since loans under an ICL program assume higher tuition fees (therefore, bigger loans) ICLs can only represent an usurious way of financing post-secondary education.
To say that law and medicine students will reap the most distorted benefits because they are “subsidized” by the poor and because they will end up earning good incomes is also nonsense. This is so because loans are not “subsidies” and because the poor do not “subsidize” education. According to Statistics Canada, only 17.8% of Canadians were living below the poverty line (1995). Furthermore, the poor, myself included, are taxed minimally or not at all. The ones who really support (rather than the misnomer “subsidize”) education are the working, middle and upper classes.
We must be rid of this fallacy of the poor taxpayer “subsidizing” the affluent student. Affluent students do not qualify for loans. Finally, to say that “post-secondary education is a privilege to be earned; and not a right to be handled out indiscriminately” sets a dangerous precedent. Mr. Jones is saying that post-secondary education should be a privilege for the elite and that we should open the door to discriminatory policies and practices. A law student promoting an aggressive fee increase, fully aware that his own future career protects him against the damaging effects of any loan repayment program, is being hypocritical and detrimental to the student body in general.
Mr. Jones’ defense of high tuitions is akin to defending the morality of shark loans to students in need. Bear in mind, then, that deregulating tuition fees and implementing ICLs would be very convenient to a few but an injustice to most.
