Financial anxiety at university is all too common. On ACORN, the red number at the bottom of the Finances page looms menacingly over students. Yet, many U of T courses require students to purchase hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars in textbooks, software, and other auxiliary fees on top of our already costly tuition.
The term “microtransaction” typically derives from video games. Specifically, microtransactions are purchases that provide extra content or competitive advantages that were previously unavailable to the user upon the initial purchase of the game. We believe that the university is engaging in a similar practice by not declaring additional fees until a student can access the syllabi which reveals what material is necessary for their courses.
Student loan programs provide funding aid for students, including their tuition, housing, and books. A 2023 evaluation of Canadian student loan programs by the Canadian government found that over 40 per cent of survey respondents, who are all in the federal and provincial loan program, indicated “financial reasons” as a cause of concern when completing their studies. Of those who dropped out of university, 56 per cent cited “unexpectedly higher education costs” and 64 per cent cited “unexpectedly higher living costs” as one of the main causes.
With such pervasive financial inequalities across university campuses, The Varsity’s Editorial Board believes the university and our student union must do more to support students; namely by reducing educational microtransactions.
The cursed costs of classes
Each academic year, every U of T student pays $59.25 to the Student System Access Fee — this includes our account access to university-mandated Student Web Service, ACORN.
U of T’s school-mandated course portal Quercus can host quizzes and interactive discussion boards. Despite Quercus’ various functions, some professors require students to purchase additional services such as TopHat or iClicker, which provide the same function as the portal.
The iClicker, a remote for answering live questions in lectures, is registered with each student’s Quercus account and was supposedly necessary for courses such as AST101 — The Sun and Its Neighbours because it prevents students from taking quizzes from home.
Yet, our Editorial Board believes that courses requiring additional service purchases only exploit students’ wallets, as these services are entirely unnecessary. Especially in large lecture spaces like Convocation Hall, for which iClickers are deemed most effective, students could bring their absent friends’ iClickers to the class and answer questions for them. We further doubt that this is the most effective and equitable route to education, considering Quercus’s password-protected quizzes serve as a way to prevent absent students from accessing them.
Issues with iClickers are not exclusive to U of T. Stanford University’s student paper, The Stanford Daily, reported on the prevalence of iClicker cheating on campus. Meanwhile, students at Simon Fraser University in BC voiced their opinions on the “banality of the iClicker” in 2019, even calling it a “useless device” in 2022. The consensus among many North American post-secondary students seems to be that iClickers are not worth it.
TopHat provides a similar service, giving students access to digital textbooks and e-learning materials, but it is sneakier because the cost of these materials will “include” the textbook fee. When these digital textbooks are provided through online subscriptions, publishers can essentially control when and for how long students can access their learning materials, putting our education at the mercy of others.
U of T frequently imposes additional costs on students, even for everyday services such as general printing. The university charges $0.15 per page of letter-sized black-and-white paper and $1.00 per page of coloured paper. In comparison, Toronto Metropolitan University offers printing at half the cost, charging $0.07 per page for black-and-white paper and $0.50 for coloured paper, highlighting the disparity in costs between the two institutions.
Understanding how the costs of additional academic resources at U of T surpass neighbouring universities makes us question why these microtransactions should govern our educational life. Our Editorial Board believes that more affordable alternatives are available and that they should be actively pursued to make learning more accessible and equitable to students.
Of professors and publishers
We must now acknowledge the role professors play in perpetuating an academic culture of microtransaction. Unfortunately, our instructors may find themselves as participants — reluctant or not — in an inequitable academic environment.
In 2015, The Guardian highlighted how academic publishers push authors to assign their books to students to maximize sales. Professors are no different — given that the textbooks they assign are often essential to their courses. This profit model thrives in the academic world, where demand is fixed.
With the rise of online resources posing a threat to the print market, a 2019 Wired article similarly observed some publishers encouraging professors to bundle ebook versions of required textbooks with supplementary learning tools and homework platforms. Under the guise of reducing print costs and mitigating material costs, the effect creates little room for professors to reduce costs for students, and corporations become embedded deeper into our educational system.
For instance, in 2020, a former UTM sessional lecturer Mitchell Huynh offered students a five per cent top-up to their grade if they bought his book Dumb Money, got it signed by him, followed him on Twitter and Instagram, and connected with him on LinkedIn.
An academic environment in which a professor’s career advancement may be linked to their publication and sales records creates an incentive for professors to embed microtransactions in their syllabi. We believe this ‘publish or perish’ environment turns accessibility and equity into a privilege that many students cannot afford.
Tackling these transactions
The UTSU currently funds a financial assistance system for students in need of academic supplies through the Student Aid Program. To be eligible, students must fill out a document declaring their annual income, living situation, and the approximate amount needed from the program to afford the supplies.
The maximum amount a student can receive from the program is $500 per year. But this may not do much for an average student. The Varsity Editorial Board members calculated the amount of money they spent on class material during their first year, and it ranged from $450 to $600.
In addition, admission to the Student Aid Program is not always guaranteed. While the program asks applicants to make a case for their urgent need for financial aid, it is also not guaranteed that students will be accommodated for the maximum $500 amount they can request.
Our Editorial Board urges the UTSU to initiate a campus-wide loan system where students resell academic supplies, such as textbooks and participation devices, to help students save money. UTM and UTSC’s student unions also do not have these programs, but perhaps all unions across U of T incorporating this system would be a first step in making our education more accessible.
In 2019, then-UTSU Vice-President, University Affairs Joshua Grondin wrote to The Varsity in a statement that the union would prepare a report for the Business Board of Governing Council. He wrote that the report would include student feedback and data on lectures that use digital learning services.
Grondin stated that the union’s ultimate goal is for the university to purchase an “institution-wide subscription for digital learning services” or “stronger regulations on these services.” At the very least, Grondin hoped that “prices for digital learning services are included in course descriptions.”
As of writing, however, it seems the UTSU had made little to no progress, and the union did not respond to The Varsity when we inquired about their plans on tackling microtransactions. Though financial assistance is a great step forward, microtransactions which factor directly into financial stress on students, should be directly targeted rather than retroactively mediated — something that the university should begin to seriously tackle but also something the student unions should also help initiate.
In the meantime, we believe Grondin was right — the university should have the responsibility to declare the costs of their courses in the academic calendar, for digital learning services or textbooks, before students enroll in courses and sink in hundreds of dollars.
The Varsity’s masthead elects the editorial board at the beginning of each semester. For more information about the editorial policy, email [email protected].
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