What did the 2012 protests achieve?
The 2012 protests here, the printemps érable, got a lot of press, but did they achieve their initial goal of holding down university tuition? La Presse’s Francis Vailles says no. Since that time, tuition has risen twice as fast as inflation, but a larger percentage of the typical age group is now going to university than ever. Not surprising, given that even the meanest office job now requires a BA.
ant6n 11:03 on 2022-02-14 Permalink
Meanest office job?
Also, international tuition more than doubled…
Kate 11:10 on 2022-02-14 Permalink
Mean in the sense of “Of a common or low origin, grade, or quality; common; humble.”
Joey 12:25 on 2022-02-14 Permalink
I don’t understand the framing/headline/lede. The article explains in extreme detail how the evolution of tuition, ancillary fees, financial aid and university participation have all trended in the direction students wanted since 2012 – students achieved their goal of killing the Charest tuition hikes (and, ultimately, the Charest government) yet it’s a “partie nulle” because tution is rising at the rate of individual revenue, somewhat faster than inflation (let’s check back in a year)? This is a shining example of how economics reporters can be out-clever themselves. A more honest approach would have been to look at different types of students and compare now to 2012 to the proposed Charest hikes. As ant6n points out, there’s hardly an even distribution of outcomes – low-income students? Better off. Kids of the middle class? Probably about the same, though that depends on whether they rely more on tax credits (worse off) or financial aid (better off). Rich Bahrainis? “Worse” off, technically speaking. GND? Much better off.
ant6n 16:09 on 2022-02-14 Permalink
I came as an international student, close to 20 years ago. I was a middle class German, not a rich Bahraini. With the hikes as they instituted them after 2012, I would´ve never been able to come to Canada and wouldn’t be a Canadian now. Framing international students as a bunch of rich folks from autocratic countries ignores that there are also plenty who aren’t rich (aren’t from France), and who may come from arguably more democratic countries.
(Btw, Canadians and Americans going to Germany pay the same low tuition as everybode else, so more and more North Americans are going there, as there are more and more programs in English. I feel somewhat ambivalent about that)
Joey 17:17 on 2022-02-14 Permalink
Fair enough, though the trend to treat international students solely as cash cows began well before 2012, and is certainly not limited to Quebec. Around that time universities could charge international students whatever they wanted in certain programs (science, engineering, business, etc.) and not those with whom the province had an agreement (Francophonie, chiefly) – those students paid QC-student fees. So you had scenarios where Acadians from across the NB border were paying more than students from France. Anyway, that’s a digression. I think the deregulated tuition for international students has been expanded to more if not all programs of study. When I was a student and then working in higher ed the student associations spent a huge amount of energy trying to maintain low tuition fees for international students, which really spoke to the global class solidarity angle – though, you know, the wealthy Bahrainis benefited as much as the middle-class Germans.