News Student Strike in Quebec: Is it Justified?

[Enrickey]

I currently attend Cegep (Kind of like community college in Quebec. It's mandatory if you plan on going into university, and it replaces grade 12 and freshman year) and there's a bunch of talks for a student strike to try and prevent a planned tuition increase of 500$ for University in Quebec.

Basically, we have the least expensive tuition fees in all of Canada at about $3000 a semester after taxes and fees and all those things, but the government plans on increasing it by 500$ a semester.

I feel that this increase is almost insignificant seeing as it's going to make the average education cost an extra $1500, which with student loans, can be paid back very quickly. The proposed strike is just going to be a 3 day break from school which is going to have to be made back at the end of the semester.

Does anyone feel that a student strike for something like this is actually justified? I don't think that anyone in the government is actually going to take it seriously, and I'm going to have to skip a lecture tomorrow just to vote against it. With such inexpensive schooling already, do people even have the right to complain about a small increase?

 

[Yonoz]

We had a student strike last semester as a result of a planned rise tuition in fees. It was a failure as the student leaders "jumped the gun" too quickly, at the wrong time (after the tuition fees for that year were collected), and left no aces up their sleeve. As a result, the only ones feeling the negative consequences were the strikers themselves. Very soon the students leaders, who got their share of publicity, climbed down from their trees while nothing was achieved. Now the university staff is striking over a plan to reform their employment contracts and they are doing it properly - the senior staff started, the junior staff later joined, and no demonstrations (yet). We'll see how that works, as the universities will have to return this semester's tuition fees if the strike does not end soon.
So besides the justification for it, one needs to consider the cost/benefit of it - can your leaders explain to you how they expect it to work?

 

[ShawnD]

So basically you're proposing that you pay a bunch of money and not show up. Your protesting spirit is admirable, but this will accomplish nothing.

Something more appropriate would be a normal march/rally with a few media people to pickup the story. You need to get the message out before anybody can jump on the bandwagon and support you.

 

[Enrickey]

I'm actually proposing that we don't do it.

 

[drankin]

Are there alternative/competitive means of getting the same education?

 

[Enrickey]

Are there alternative/competitive means of getting the same education?

There are no ways of getting a university education outside of paying the 3000$ a semester, or what will become 3500$ because it's the least expensive in Canada. We currently pay less for our university education than it costs to attend community college in the states.

 

[ShawnD]

There are no ways of getting a university education outside of paying the 3000$ a semester, or what will become 3500$ because it's the least expensive in Canada. We currently pay less for our university education than it costs to attend community college in the states.

First off, that's not even remotely close to the "cheapest" in Canada. University of Alberta is $2,343 per semester, and that's after several budget cuts the conservatives made in the past few years.

As an alternative, you could attend a 2-year tech school. I went to NAIT where it's only http://www.nait.ca/webcalendar/fulltimefees.htm per semester. You get the same basic education, but it's more focused on... you know... reality. English at NAIT is about grammar, spelling, technical writing, how to make reports, and overall flash (nobody will read your stuff if the layout is hard to read). Meanwhile, my friend at UofA had to write an 18 page essay about the book Frankenstein, because Frankenstein had a major impact on the world of chemistry. While I was learning about mass spectroscopy, my friend was taking Classics and Greek History. Nothing helps speed up the analysis like a good ol' Greek History Machine, the one with two separate detectors .

They end up competing for the same jobs anyway, so you might as well cheap out and get it done as fast as possible, unless you plan on doing graduate studies.