CFS trashes former premier
Re: Rae of hope, Nov. 16.
Bob Rae either didn’t read our brief, or is willfully ignorant of the facts. As the Canadian Federation of Students has pointed out at length in our submission to the Rae Review, rising tuition fees do not improve the quality of higher education. This is because, in each and every country where tuition fees increase, the government withdraws a corresponding amount in public funding.
In the UK, per student funding is now less than in 1996 when there were no tuition fees at all. In the US, despite double-digit tuition fee increases, there have been faculty and staff layoffs and declining library acquisitions. Yet this is the vision Mr. Rae is espousing for Ontario students.
While Mr. Rae calls those who advocate for lower tuition fees “nuts,” he ought to make that case against countries like Sweden, France, Ireland, Finland and Germany that have no tuition fees. We think Ontarians are entitled to more debate and less-name calling from a former premier.
Mr. Rae’s characterization of our position is a gross and self-interested distortion. The Canadian Federation of Students has been doing nothing but advocating for improvements in education quality.
The solution to the quality crisis in higher education is greater public funding, not more student debt. We invite students to visit our website www.ReviewRae.ca for a more complete examination of the evidence than that which has been produced by Mr. Rae to date.
Jesse Greener,
Ontario Chairperson,
Canadian Federation of Students
Tuition transparency
Re: Rae of hope, Nov. 16.
Tuition fees are on the rise, and Ontario’s post-secondary education system is in jeopardy because Ontario universities are exempt from the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOI). Universities receive more than two billion taxpayer dollars each year, yet university boards of governors and management operate without any substantive or meaningful form of public scrutiny or accountability.
This offers great protection for university administrators, but does nothing to protect public investment and makes a mockery of the term “accountability.” Yet we are being asked to accept the need for tuition increases.
Mr. Rae is concerned with bringing more money to universities, and students, it appears, will be expected to shoulder that burden. But how, in the absence of disclosure and transparency, can we know that the money already in the universities is being spent wisely or not, or if tuition increases are, in fact, justified? In the absence of universities being subject to FOI legislation, we cannot know.
Until such time as the Ontario universities are made “institutions” under FOI legislation so that they become accountable and transparent, no new money whatsoever should be provided and tuition should not be allowed to increase.
But I doubt that Mr. Rae or the COU would agree.
Ken Brown
OurTrent.com
More pinkness
Re: Smokin’! Part one: “Pink Lungs Project,” Nov. 16.
I am pleased to see that York University is taking steps toward becoming a smoke-free campus, but why should we let York lead the way? It is time for U of T to strengthen its smoking policy, which hasn’t been updated since 1995. U of T needs to designate smoke-free areas outside crowded entrances so that students do not have to walk through clouds of smoke to get to class.
More positively, I would like to remind students that, as Professor Joe Levy lamented, unlike York, U of T does have a smoking cessation program, with no additional costs to students, called Leave The Pack Behind. We exist for anyone who wants information about smoking, including those wanting to quit.
Lee Nesseth
Campus Program CoordinatorLeave the Pack BehindUniversity of Toronto
