On Wednesday December 8, the Rae roadshow arrives at St. George for a second Town Hall at U of T. The event is ill-timed, jockeying with exams, essays and the annual winter crunch. But anyone who takes seriously the health and vitality of this institution must find time to attend.
There are many principled reasons why students should contribute to the public debate about the future of higher education. One very practical reason, however, can be found in U of T’s recent recommendations to the Rae Review: a polished tract that highlights, amongst other well-meaning suggestions, a plan to deregulate tuition.
In this elegantly composed wish-list for U of T, Governing Council (GC) judiciously orates (beneath the institutional blanket of “The University of Toronto”) quite bluntly that it should have the authority to fix the cost of our education, and not the Provincial Government. In other words, GC should be allowed to set U of T’s tuition fees at whatever price it sees fit.
To be fair, “tuition deregulation” is a contested phrase with competing definitions. On the one hand, organizations like the Canadian Federation of Students have interpreted deregulation as a kind of nightmare scenario, which would make post-secondary education an expensive commodity priced beyond the reach of many Canadians. And if the U.S. system is any indicator, this type of deep scepticism is not entirely misplaced. A glance at U.S. enrollment statistics based on income backgrounds will dispel any wishful (or willfully ignorant) notions of who is attending university.
But in the hands of GC, “tuition deregulation” is carefully and compellingly framed as institutional “self-regulation,” a rhetorical massage masking the latent content of this utterance: students will pick up more of the tab, not less; tuition fees will go up, not down; post-secondary education as individual privilege, not public good.
Should this be cause for widespread alarm? Not necessarily, although it certainly warrants informed and spirited debate. There are a lot of issues at play here, and GC’s proposal for deregulation is part of a larger strategy that would give universities the autonomy to tend their own gardens, unweeded as they are. According to them, universities need to have more control over fees in order to compensate for market downturns, and a drain on government funds (ie. Healthcare) if they are to maintain and improve standards of teaching and research.
According to GC, the requisite responsibilities that this newfound freedom entails would assumedly tag along for the ride: “accessibility issues” (ie. cost) would now fall under U of T’s jurisdiction, rather than at the foot of some governmental/institutional/private Cerberus lurking in a bureaucratic abyss. And of course, GC would remain committed to its touching “No Child Left Behind” clause, which states that “no student offered admission to U of T will be unable to enter or to complete their program due to lack of financial means[.]”
On the brighter side, GC’s submissions to the Rae Review are littered with concurrent demands for a solid, publicly-funded base, which student fees would merely complement. Apparently, Governing Council doesn’t want to gouge us. But the fact remains, “self-regulation”-or whatever one wants to call it -gives them the power to do so. But before we expediently and collectively call bullshit, perhaps we ought to press GC to refine what they mean by this term.
As students of today, we have an obligation to ensure that students of tomorrow have access to rigorous, intensive, and affordable post-secondary education. So lay down your books for one evening, and head over to the Isabel Bader Theatre. When you get there, tell Bob Rae and his coterie about your thoughts on the future of publicly funded post-secondary education in Ontario. Tell him what you think about GC’s suggestions, and perhaps remind him that they are only suggestions that best serve one highly-motivated institution amongst many others in the province.
