Nov. 5th Student Day of Action, originally uploaded by VladGlebov.com.
A few thousand students gathered on Nov. 5th at St. George campus and then later at Queens park to send a pretty clear message, “drop fees”. Students are finding that its impossible to afford a University or College education even if you work all summer. Tuition fees that we are paying now are much higher then what any other generation of Ontario students had to endure and they keep going up and up. Just recently, we’ve been declared a “have-not” province after sky rocketing tuition fees since 1995, only interrupted by a brief two freeze. I think there is a common sense correlation between a booming knowledge based economy and access to post-secondary education.
The only way to increase access to education is to begin freezing and then lowering fees, provide more grants, and invest in universities to increase quality and spaces. I also like Obama’s idea of providing community service grants for volunteering. If Ontario will ever be an economic boom province again, education is where we have to invest, human resource is the only natural resource we’ve got.
I strongly feel that we’re paying to much for tuitions. I feel bad for those international students many of them whom i’m friends with, but your last line made me think. ” If Ontario will ever be an economic boom province again, education is where we have to invest, human resource is the only natural resource we’ve got”…this being said, how much should the government reduce fees for international students when majority of them move back home once they’ve completed their education?
How about the York strike? 50,000 students sitting at home trying to stay on top of their readings not knowing what will happen when the storm is over. I’m one of those students. When making my decision to come to york, their past history of their 11 week strike made me think twice. Obviously, I didn’t think hard enough during that second round of thinking and I also didn’t think the university would allow this to happen again because it hurts their reputation. Again I feel bad for the international students because they already pay so much in tuition, many of them have to cancel their flights home, and may not finish their degree this year as planned.
I WANT MY EDUCATION, AND I WANT IT NOW!