Anniversaries awaken numbed memories. For some, the tenth anniversary of Printemps érable is to plunge back into the passion and ideals of a mobilized youth; for others, it is a reminder of a painful social divide and the maintenance of a hard line – political and police – on the struggle of the students. The clamor of 2012 turned into a social song, with a concert of saucepans as an orchestra. She advocated freezing and free. She was fighting against an exacerbated increase in tuition fees. She finally settled for an annual indexation. Frankly, this formula chosen by Quebec is still the best.
Quebec has had its share of student strikes carried out in the name of better accessibility, its argumentative corollary often being the freezing or abolition of tuition fees. The first of these strikes would have been played in 1958, and advocated a more equitable access to the university. The last ended last week, and focused on a triad of demands: ecological transition, payment for university internships and free education. On March 22, 10 years to the day after the red wave that brought together some 200,000 people meandering through the streets in Montreal, 2,000 demonstrators dusted off the red square and raised their fists.
The idea of free education invariably reappears, according to student movements and economic cycles. In absolute terms, there is nothing ugly about it and is a political choice that must then be made – with the bill that accompanies it. The great operation to democratize education held in Quebec in the 1960s, which gave rise to the Parent report, had indeed advocated it. Free at university, and until then, transitional period of freezing rights. The student fights of the last few years have focused on the freezing of rights; the demand for total free access has never been unanimous, even among student groups, including in 2012.
The dream of free education and the end of the “commodification of education” is based on mirage postulates: nothing ensures that it is the only effect of the disappearance of tuition fees that would make it possible to increase attendance. university and the accessibility of higher education, as promised. Moreover, although supporters of free education forcefully reject the idea that tuition fees are a profitable individual “investment”, we cannot reject the immutable: “a university degree is much more ‘paying’ than ‘a diploma that is lower than the baccalaureate’, as the economist Pierre Fortin recently wrote in The insufficiency of university education in Quebec and the comparative underfunding of Quebec universitiess. In 2012, the leaders of university establishments had made it one of their main arguments for the increase in fees.
If Quebec decided to absorb the bill for tuition fees paid by university students, it would cost it $1.36 billion, or the equivalent of 13.5% of the budget of the Ministry of Higher Education, as reported it The duty Monday. If the objective is indeed to relieve students who struggle to combine the costs of living with this bill of some $2,800 per year, nothing indicates that a universal abolition of fees is the most effective measure. Improving financial assistance programs, support measures for student parents, payment for internships, these are the avenues that would directly help those who need it. They would prevent us from falling into a useless trap: that of indirectly paying a subsidy to the middle and upper classes, who are still largely represented in the university sphere.
France, long presented as the model in terms of free education at university, recently mentioned the end of this model, which digs into the underfunding of establishments. It also encourages a two-speed system, pushes the better-off towards ultra-limited schools and implicitly raises the crucial but delicate question of quality.
Under Pauline Marois, Quebec chose in 2013 the most acceptable compromise, namely an indexation of tuition fees – not the considerable increase imposed by the Liberals or the free education hoped for by students. This formula is always the best, especially if, as Minister Danielle McCann has just confirmed, exceptional measures make it possible to mitigate the increase, as was done on the sidelines of the Girard budget.