Bob Rae Calls For Higher Tuition Fees And Higher Student Debt

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Bob Rae is just another Bilderberg Power-Corp cronie trying to make sure that the rent-seeking banking class gets in on a piece of the "echo" generation of students who are expected to overload Ontario's post-secondary system in the next 5 years. <br />
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"But all those above the $35,000 threshold would finance their education exclusively through loans. Throughout the consultation process, Rae repeated the mantra that Ontario has only two groups of students: wealthy ones who should pay more and low-income students who need help."<br />
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geez, the average student's parental household income is proibably around 60 grand.<br />
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<a href="http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1107989411735&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795">http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1107989411735&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795</a><br />
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His proposals for student assistance reforms are intentionally predicated on a tuition fee threshold of $6,000 — at least $1,000 more than today's undergraduate average of $4,960.<br />
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Worse still, is that, embedded in every aspect of his proposals, is the reality that fees will increase beyond $6,000 and he has cleared the way for a private, parallel loan system to be developed at the institutional level.<br />
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Under the current loan program, interest is subsidized by government during the student's study period. Under the parallel loan system, Rae envisions no interest subsidy at all. In fact, students would begin accumulating interest from the moment the loan is negotiated."<br />
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Rae on Universities:<br />
<a href="http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=4734">http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=4734</a><br />
"It is in the context of the conflicting passions that mark the debate in Israeli society, as they must do in any democratic society, that I want to draw attention to the role of reason, facts, evidence, research, in the search for better public policy. That is what great universities are supposed to do. That is what Hebrew University does. It has been a centre of world scholarship since its foundation in 1925. Its beginning was a cause for celebration – its continued success is a cause entirely worthy of our support…<br />
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I also accepted this award for another reason, and that is my profound belief that universities matter. They are centres of excellence and innovation. They provide great opportunity in open societies. They also challenge orthodoxy. By insisting on the integrity of intellectual life, they play an irreplaceable role in our society as they do in Israeli society…<br />
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In a way, we’re celebrating two wonderful countries – our own, because it’s given us the means and the ability to support the causes in which we believe, and of course, to Israel, to which we owe so much. "

I wonder how much Bob Rae paid in tuition to earn his degree? Given his age, he was probably in university in about the early 1980s or earlier. At that time, I would guess that tuition in most universities across Canada would probably have cost less than $500 per year and books a lot cheaper too.

In my opinion College and University education should be just as much as an investement to the government as it is for the individual. I'm not saying that the government should front the entire cost for a wealthy kid to go to school. However, for for a student who wants to go to University, but has a limited family income. The government should help pay the entire course, with a fairly good pay back plan. Even no interest at all would make sense, and no chance of a collection agency calling them at home, harassing them, like they do to m cousin.

Kevin

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"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."
--Bertrand Russell

The worst cause of worry for this is, of course, that there are two different classes of people at all-rich and poor. Acceptance of that fact as natural is a dangerous thing. There is virtually no reason to give now for high tuition costs, like medicare we KNOW that it's far cheaper to subsidize it through taxes. Take arts and business for example, next to the investment on a computer there is virtually no cost other than a professor, and in fact during my undergraduate degree I learned far more under a good prof's supervision while I did my own research in independant studies courses. In most cases the prof was more of a hindrance than a help. There are few faculties, perhaps science and medicine where technology is necessary, if the medical system were integrated with education system we'd have access to far more machines, so many under this double subsidization that people wouldn't have to wait and students could utilize the technology for study purposes. In science already we have a bastardized form of capitalism where our taxes are basically used to create other people's patients. If there were, again, far more integration within society then schools would benefit more. The university here helped create RIM but shares in none of its success except some philanthropic bones thrown by the owner.

That being said, much of university education is subsidized ignorance. The most important things to learn, ie. questioning the assumptions society is built upon, you never get at a formal school setting. Our universities are generally glamourized community colleges and I wouldn't even recommend them to most students unless their chosen profession demanded it (and many don't)

I agree but you forget to mention the fact that business is one of the three chief benefactors. Unfortunately, in Canada business has looked at funding postsecondary education as more of a liability than the investment for their own future that it is. In Alberta, they may just be starting to realize this as it is finally being brought to their attention (and everybody else's) in the media that literally billions of dollars of potential profits are being lost because the province didn't have the foresight to increase postsecondary funding as Alberta's population and economy have been growing. This, of course, with business cheering in the background because their taxes have been reduced as a result. In actual fact Klein's tories cut this funding so much so that last year over 30,000 qualified applicants were turned away.

The other thing business is going to have to realize is that even if there are more graduates they are going to have to commit to training these people. In other words, they are an integral part of our economic puzzle. It seems that up until now they mostly think that the rest of us are here to fund education with personal taxes to provide the graduates while they reap their part of the reward while contributing next to nothing by comparison.