Ten years ago, Quebec experienced the key moment of the student protests of 2012. It was on March 22 in the spring that 200,000 people took to the streets to show their support for the “red squares” movement. This is a mobilization of historic proportions. Following this mobilization, the Liberal increase was replaced by PQ indexation. Since then, some like to say that this great social movement would have been nothing but a failure. That the loans and bursaries program or the tax credits offered would have compensated for the initial increase anyway and that, in the end, it was all just much ado about nothing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The student mobilization first wanted to defend access to education. Reduced tuition fees, or even their abolition through free education, facilitate access to school for all. Despite the financial aid, the signal sent by an increase has a dissuasive effect on entry by discouraging many young people from considering a university course. The accounting mindset that a graduate will “make his money back” in the long term ignores a simple reality: 1) not everyone has the money to make this “investment” initial and 2) the fears related to the anticipation of a debt have serious dissuasive effects.
For a student who completes his baccalaureate in the spring, the cancellation of the increase is equivalent to a saving of $4,257 ($2,459 for those who would have been entitled to the maximum refund of the tax credit for tuition fees which has been reduced). A total of 390,000 graduates were able to complete their undergraduate studies at a lower cost thanks to the student strike. From the point of view of the defense of access to education, the results of 2012 are positive, it is undeniable.
Countering the commodification of education
Initially, the request to raise tuition fees came from the universities themselves. From their rectors, to be more precise. The argument went as follows: in a globalized education market, in a competitive “knowledge economy” and in the North American context of market and ruthless competition between university establishments, Quebec universities are fighting unequal weapons. Their “solution”: increase the student bill, all to settle an alleged “underfunding” which has never been rigorously demonstrated.
The arguments of the rectors revealed their total resignation in the face of the defense of the establishments for which they were responsible. In their minds, more financial resources had to be raised to compete internationally. Who would or would not have access to universities once fees were increased? How was this commercial logic going to affect the knowledge that we were going to develop there and that we were going to transmit? All these questions were brushed aside. Yet they are crucial.
Because that is also what the student strike opposed: a purely commercial vision of education. The idea that universities are factories intended to produce graduates and patents. As a society, this commercial mentality endangers one of the rare spaces where the development of critical thinking is still possible. The 2012 movement was also right to denounce this vision and work to slow down its implementation.
Free education
Ten years later, we are commemorating an important step in Maple Spring. The Quebec government should take advantage of the tabling of the pre-election budget to put Quebec back on the path of non-market education. A good way to reconnect with the spirit of 2012 and with the ideals of the Quiet Revolution would be to use this budget to announce the implementation of a free tuition policy in Quebec universities. This is the step that the strike did not succeed in making us cross a decade ago, but this choice remains the one that must be made.
No one should have to pay or go into debt to study. Education is first and foremost an act of learning enabling everyone to be part of a common world and to participate in it as a citizen. It is not a commodity, let alone an individual investment.