Bob Rae, former NDP
Premier of Ontario
and currently education advisor to the Liberal McGuinty
government, released his report on higher education on February 7. Entitled “Ontario: a Leader in
Learning”, the report claims to signal a new commitment to higher education for
all. However, once the rhetoric and obfuscation are stripped away, what remains
is a proposal for increased tuition fees and an increase in the enormous
student debt load carried by tens of thousands of university students who
already cannot afford the huge costs of post-secondary education. This initiative
could have serious repercussions across Canada if other provinces choose to
follow suit.
The report comes
after an extensive “consultation” process involving hundreds of submissions,
town hall meetings and Round Table discussions all across Ontario. Rae’s preamble to the report brags
about how exciting this “debate” on education has been. However, this process
has once again proved to be a smokescreen meant to give the appearance of
democracy while the end result is a report which does not reflect the views of
the people who took the time to prepare submissions and engage in discussions.
Rather, it serves the monopoly capitalist interests, which was its intended
purpose from the beginning.
One of the key
recommendations of the Rae report is that tuition fees will be set by each
institution, i.e. deregulation of tuition fees province-wide, with the added
provision that the provincial government will ensure “predictability,
transparency and affordability” for students. It does not take a degree in
rocket science, as they say, to “predict” the outcome of this. Tuition fees are
bound to go through the transparent roof. At the same time, the report proposes
balancing these increases with grants to low-income students, but the grant
ceilings, income thresholds and expected tuition levels are such as to
guarantee that few students will receive any net benefit from these grants.
More students
will need to turn to larger amounts of student loans in order to pay for their
education. In order to ensure sufficient collateral to back the loans, parents
of students needing money will now be able to access student loans on their
behalf, thus further indebting families for decades to come. Meanwhile,
students from wealthy families will be able to afford tuitions no matter how
high they go. It will only be low and middle-income students who will have to
pay beyond their means for higher education.
The monopoly capitalists
of Ontario
want to use the post-secondary institutions to produce graduates who will be
able to better serve their corporate interests. As they will be the main
beneficiaries of this “new commitment” to higher education, they should be the
ones to pay. Instead, they have devised a scheme to further impoverish people
through higher debt loads to the financial institutions which administer the
student loan programs. The Rae report is a shameful attempt to present this act
as if it was a benefit to students.