PV Ontario Bureau
Doug Ford’s February 12 announcement that Ontario is ending the years-long tuition freeze and reducing OSAP (Ontario Student Assistance Program) grants to a maximum of 25 percent of student assistance is a deliberate step that accelerates the drive to privatization in post-secondary education.
In response, tens of thousands of post-secondary students and education workers have mobilized against these latest attacks. Their demand is that education is a right, not a privilege, and that it should be fully funded by the government and provided free of tuition. Student debt should be cancelled, and students should be provided with a stipend to cover their living expenses.
Over 70 percent of post-secondary students graduate with devastating debt, averaging nearly $30,000 per student. Ford’s decision to allow colleges and universities to increase tuition by 2 percent each year, combined with drastic changes to OSAP which replace grants with loans, mean that student debt will skyrocket even further.
It also means that an ever-greater proportion of post-secondary funding is privatized – primarily in the form of tuition payments, but also through increased corporate intrusion. This is part of a decades-long attack on public education: in 1980, Ontario universities received 80 percent of their operating revenue from public funding and 15 percent from tuition, but by 2017 the amounts had shifted to 38 percent and 56 percent respectively.
The government is trumpeting its increase in post-secondary funding by $6.4 billion over the next four years. In fact, when adjusted for inflation and student population, that still leaves Ontario colleges and universities at least $1.5 billion behind where they were in 2018. Furthermore, it does nothing to fix the damage from years of chronic underfunding. Even after Ford’s $6.4 billion announcement, a number of colleges announced more job and program cuts, adding to the 10,000 academic and non-academic workers who have already lost their jobs.
These attacks on accessible public education are complemented by the Ford government’s accompanying assault on the democratic organizations that defend it. Last year, Bill 33 imposed “right-to-work” style policies aimed at bankrupting student unions, student media and vital services like campus food banks. This is a direct attack on student organizing, designed to fracture the organizational capacity of the student movement.
Drop fees, not bombs!
It isn’t as if governments can’t afford to fund education. Federally, the Carney government’s decision to more than triple military spending to over $150 billion by 2035 shows that the capacity for increased funding exists – the estimated cost of eliminating tuition fees across the country is $14 billion, less than one-tenth of what Ottawa is dedicating to the arms budget.
But funding post-secondary education and eliminating tuition requires a massive shift in government priorities. Federally, for example, that means forcing Ottawa to fund education rather than the military – to drop fees, not bombs. Provincially, it includes forcing Queen’s Park to reverse its decades-long privatization of college and university funding – to increase public grants and decrease student debt which fills the coffers of the banks. In both cases, it means putting people’s needs ahead of corporate greed.
The student movement mobilized!
Ford’s sharply escalated attacks have awakened the student movement in Ontario. More than 4,000 students and post-secondary workers rallied at Queens Park on March 4, condemning the OSAP cuts and tuition hikes, and more rallied again on March 24 – this is the basis for building a mass movement that can fight Ford’s attacks and win real gains.
Among the demands around which students and post-secondary workers are building a movement are:
- Increased funding to public post-secondary education, and an end to corporate funding and privatization.
- Elimination of tuition fees for post-secondary education – grants not loans!
- Cancellation of student debt and a living stipend to all post-secondary students.
- An end to all credit-recognition schemes for corporate training programs.
- Expanded Indigenous and French-language post-secondary education.
- Free, democratic, accessible quality education for all!
[Photo of March 4 rally: CFS Ontario]
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