An Argument for Free Tuition - Submitted Version

There exists that anxiety-inducing moment in every post-secondary student’s new semester where they are presented with the tuition fees.  The price of a first-year university program has gone up more than $4000 (inflation adjusted) since the 1970s and the fees keep rising.  There is a solution to this anxiety crisis; tuition-free education.  A cost-sharing universal tuition program could alleviate fees for students and allow for all to pursue post-secondary education.  Yet there exist voices of dissent on the topic.  Those in opposition of free tuition are convinced that provincial governments will not be able to meet the funding demands of the program.  They also claim free tuition will only benefit affluent students because they will be able to afford living expenses whereas disadvantaged students will still struggle.  That said, neoliberal economists are not arguing for retention of tuition fees because there is altruism to it but because keeping education financially exclusive preserves social exclusivity.

Canada is a mixed economy and regulates certain industries to protect the welfare of its citizens.  The affluent benefit from universal programs because the nature of a universal benefit program is to ensure all its citizens have equal access.  The purpose of free tuition is to open the cost barrier to a disadvantaged person seeking an education.  There is a claim that tuition costs are meager compared to the costs of living but the triple fold increase in tuition is still a significant cost barrier to disadvantaged students.  Removing tuition costs significantly reduces the burden put on those students struggling to afford the ever-increasing costs of living and allows them to allocate their income to those expenses.

Economists have recommended that changes to the student loan program be made to help disadvantaged students afford living expenses and tuition.  This debt load, however, represents an imbalance upon post-graduate finances.  The debt load from student borrowing is significant (on average $25,000 per student.)  Tuition fees on average are $5000 per semester so eliminating those fees significantly reduces the debt burden.  The debt-free graduate could allocate their new income towards savings and asset allocation almost exclusively.  This is the advantage that affluent students have, and it creates a disparity right out of the education phase.  A universal tuition program will bridge this disparity gap by producing students with significantly less or no debt to hinder their earning potential.

This debt-free wave of students is beneficial to the economy of this country.  Work ready graduates who have little to no debt burden are eager to amass savings and consume resources for the allocation of housing and family-building.  The higher population of educated working adults means the productivity of several industries will increase which raises profits which increases the taxation base for provincial and federal governments.  They key is to convince the provinces to focus on providing opportunities to young people and those requiring education instead of consistently managing taxation for the aging population (who are statistically more affluent.)

The cost-sharing structure that exists for cross-legislative programs is an adequate model for the abolition of tuition, where the federal government contributes a portion of the fees to the provinces while the provinces provide the educational institutions with majority of the funding and the legislative mandates for that funding.  The average salary of a full tenure professor is almost half that of a general practice physician (also funded by a universal government program) and tuition fees are easily calculable (X = students attending program, Y = tuition fee: xy = provincial payment to the school for that program.)  Federal and provincial funding could easily be mandated in each budget based on the projected number of graduating students and the number of post-secondary enrolled students for the previous or current budget year.

The opposition to free tuition comes from a neoliberal mindset that wants to see a return to laissez faire economics and reduced government regulation.  However, the Canadian economy experienced the fall out market capitalism during the Great Depression and then the Second World War so the shift to a social welfare state was made.  This mixed economy has fluctuated over the years, but it remains that the programs institutionalized during the 1950s have evolved in their establishment.  Canada can open further opportunities to disadvantaged citizens through providing them with easily accessible and affordable education.  This is the answer to the ever-increasing tuition anxiety and the burden that student debt poses on the disadvantaged student.  The argument against making tuition free is loud but the reality of making it free is very clear.

Sources:

Arte, B., & Arte, B. (2016, October 17). It's time for Canada to embrace free tuition. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/bilan-arte/the-case-for-free-tuition_b_12516930.html

Flood, M. (2015, March 23). Should post-secondary education in Canada be free? Retrieved from https://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/5518188-should-post-secondary-education-in-canada-be-free-/

Hopper, T. (2018, February 20). Why the NDP's new 'free tuition' plan is terrible, awful, no-good policy (unless you're rich). Retrieved from https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-the-ndps-new-free-tuition-plan-is-terrible-awful-no-good-policy-unless-youre-rich

Phillips, M. (2016, May 15). The high price of a free college education in Sweden. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the-high-price-of-a-free-college-education-in-sweden/276428/

Rankings, C. (2017, November 07). Yes, there is such a thing as free tuition in Canada. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/campus-rankings/yes-there-is-such-a-thing-as-free-tuition-in-canada_a_23268498/

Sagan, A. (2014, March 11). Meet a graduate carrying Canada's average student debt load | CBC News. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/average-student-debt-difficult-to-pay-off-delays-life-milestones-1.2534974

University tuition rising to record levels in Canada | CBC News. (2013, September 11). Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/university-tuition-rising-to-record-levels-in-canada-1.1699103

Usher, A. (2018, February 20). Ten bad arguments about free tuition in Canada. Retrieved from http://higheredstrategy.com/ten-bad-arguments-free-tuition-canada/

Yelland, T. (2015, April 28). ​Why Canada should have free university tuition, and how it could. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/dpkkpx/why-canada-should-have-free-university-tuition-and-how-it-could-172

InDesign Report on "Helvetica"

My report on the documentary "Helvetica" created in InDesign and exported into a jpeg format.

Helvetica - Gary Hustwit

Interview with Yvonne Raymond

Interview

My interview with Yvonne Raymond from CTV News for my Digital Production course.  We thank her for her participation in our next step of learning.

Military Life - Pacific Women's Day 2018

Pacific Women’s Day is not just any day. It is a Military Family Resource Center (MFRC) tradition. It celebrates the sacrifice and dedication of women connected to the military and gives them a day to celebrate themselves. The venue perfectly complemented this goal - it was held at the awe-inspiring Royal Roads University and has been held there for many years. We began the event with a land acknowledgement thanking the Xwesepsum (Esquimalt) and Lkwungen (Songhees) peoples for sharing with us the opportunity to gather and learn at this place.

The 2018 Pacific Women’s Day featured two very distinguished guests; Kerry Vance, an accomplished lawyer and spouse of the Chief of Defense Staff, and Kim Mills, the creator and inspiring voice of She is Fierce and spouse of a Canadian soldier. Their words touched the ears of over one hundred women, including myself, and inspired us to self-awareness, self-care, and self-celebration. They spoke of the struggles we face but also the triumphs we make and how important it was that we take care of ourselves through those phases.

The day was filled with a variety of workshops led by passionate facilitators. For those looking for ultimate relaxation, the event also provided massage and yoga sessions. Many of the workshops were held in the historic Hatley Castle, which was an inspiration for celebration. The MFRC made sure that every woman in attendance felt special and valued. We were nourished through the delicious university catering for breakfast and lunch, entertained by an icebreaker bingo game before the opening ceremony, and gifted tasty and entertaining treasures at our departure.

Local businesswomen, who themselves were connected to the military, were invited to set up shop in the main hall. Participants had the opportunity to browse the “marketplace” where we could purchase wares and discover new services during the lunch break up until the end of the event.

Pacific Women’s Day 2018 closed with a round of applause and appreciations to the generous hosts and guest speakers. We all waited in anticipation as prize draws were made; awarding lucky guests with goodies such as an airline voucher, spa gift certificates, hotel accommodations, and treasures from the marketplace. The smiles, laughs, and cheers lit up the main hall that day. It is no wonder this event is a 20 year plus tradition!

TBT on a Sunday - CMNS 160 Final Article Assignment

Contrast is a phenomenon that occurs naturally in all our senses.  Opposites exist in the infinite landscape of our world and force us to take a moment to look deeper into a subject.  One contrasting individual has been making a lot of news over the past two years here in Canada.  Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, an Alberta-born University of Toronto psychology professor has surfaced from stints at Harvard, a professional therapy practice, art dealing, and overall philosophizing to become a national household name.  However, one person’s treasure is another person’s trash and there’s a lot of contrast in the war of words between his supporters and opponents.  So what does this contrast look like?

“He sought to establish himself as a free speech warrior,” former colleague and friend Dr. Bernard Schiff writes in the Toronto Star.  The professor emeritus at the University of Toronto continues on to say that Jordan Peterson is not a warrior of free speech but rather a warrior for social order.  He asserts that his former friend, “…has a complex relationship to freedom of speech...For Jordan, it appears, not all speech is equal, and not all disruption and violence are equal, either.”

His supporters, however, rally under this free speech war banner.  Barbara Kay, opinion columnist at the National Post and advocate of Jordan Peterson, says, “He is calling [people] back to the principles that should underlie life in an open and democratic society.  And now [his supporters] got this guy who’s not afraid to speak up and holds extremely different views, who will listen to their views, and who respects them as human beings.”

Is Dr. Peterson a modern-day prophetic truth-sayer?  Barbara weighs in, “...he is not afraid to smash idols and the idols that he says he’s smashing...are the philosophies that govern...which are post-modernism, relativism and Marxism.”  She continues, “...he thinks people do have the capacity to choose the right way versus the wrong way. He feels that it is the responsibility of people to make themselves as competent as they can be at whatever it is they choose to do.”  She concludes, “I think he has already changed the landscape in the free speech campus thing.”

But is there more than meets the eye?  Are we instead dealing with a manipulative maniacal truth-slayer?  Dr. Schiff writes this in his article, “[Dr. Peterson’s] messages can be strong and clear, oversimplified, as they often are, to be very accessible. He has played havoc with the truth...He frightens by invoking murderous bogeymen on the left and warning they are out to destroy the social order, which will bring chaos and destruction.”  He continues this warning in our interview together: “I think the danger is the formation of groups of people who are bound by an idea, who have a leader who if their word leads them in that direction will become aggressive.  They are already quite aggressive.”

The sides of this conversation go back and forth.  Barbara Kay describes audiences of young men and women “hungry for redemption” and “yearning to be something bigger than themselves.”  Dr. Schiff warns that this is the case but that it is an act of enabling larger groups of aggressive young people (mostly males) who feel entitled and, because of that learned entitlement, are “...now just lazy.”

This is a typical debate between Dr. Peterson’s supporters and opponents.  There is a constant back and forth narrative, swinging like a pendulum, depending on who is talking about him and on what he himself is teaching others.  In the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson writes, “I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth...that man is not truly one, but truly two.”  Some agreement does exist between the two sides yet much of the debate is focused around his intent.  So, the question now is whose version of him is going to prevail and what will that look like in the coming days?

Media Profession Lessons from Nicole Crescenzi

The brand-new bright-eyed journalist has a long path ahead of her and it’s more than a walk in the park.  The journalism industry demands confidence, stamina, and determination if one is to succeed and it will test our resolves.  This sounds frightening, of course, but there’s reward in facing our fears.  Nicole Crescenzi, a new full-time community reporter for Black Press Media, talks about the internship opportunities in which she participated and how they contributed to the necessary development of her career.

Nicole started out in journalism through tapping into the freelance market during her high school years then obtaining her degree in Anthropology at the University of Victoria.  She then completed an MA in Journalism at Carlton University which pointed her in the direction of internships and casual employment in television, radio, magazines, newspapers, and digital media.  Her educational experience speaks to all of us studying in this field, “And, of course, after [your education] you want to make sure you’re having a job.  But before that, you got to do a lot of free work.”

Herein lies the struggle we face as media students and professionals.  The ease and convenience of the online job databases tempts us to upload our credentials to anonymous career advertisements in hopes that we stand out from the crowd.  The reality, however, is that we need to go outside our comfort zones and talk to the people doing the hiring.  And sometimes, in order to get into the market, we must build exposure instead of dollars.

Nicole views her unpaid experience as worthwhile because it gave her valuable resume ammunition and great networking opportunities.  The Camosun Co-op and Career Services team reminds us that media-related professions are staffed 70% of the time through networking and relationship building so it makes sense for us to face the fear of interaction.

The interactivity of her internships resulted in Nicole’s eventual hire to CBC Radio as a casual production associate.  This was still not a full-time gig but again she speaks to the power of the connection, “…so despite not being financially very worthwhile, initially, it can be later if you make sure to really use your experience and foster those kinds of networks and relationships.”  This casual position gave her the confidence and resume nourishment to pursue the full-time community reporter position with Black Press Media.

Internships, however, were not the end all be all of Nicole’s journalism experience.  Her freelance career was long established before hitting up the CBC and the opportunities to sell her work to a variety of magazines contributed partly to her success (and her livelihood.)  Nicole attributes a lot of her success to the community she built during unpaid and casual paid employment opportunities.  It is worthwhile for us to take these lessons to heart and step into the intimidating world of occupational networking and exposure-based employment.