Much of the media coverage of the Quebec student protests has dismissed the protestors as cranky middle and upper-middle class children trying to protect their unfair privilege.
And in fact, the vast majority of today’s university students do come from relatively well-off families. But rather than weakening their position, this supports the protestors’ claims that we have a serious problem with access to education – a problem that would only be exacerbated by tuition hikes.
Instead of recognizing this, most media commentary perpetuates a discourse of austerity, demanding that students share the pain that other public service users are suffering.
Here are seven reasons why we would all be better off if we increased public investment in higher education and reduced the burden that high tuition fees impose on students and their families.
1. Making university education more affordable would allow more Canadians to access this key tool for social mobility.
The evidence is clear: university education is a route to considerably higher lifetime earnings and the returns to university degrees have increased over the last 20 years. In fact, education is the greatest equalizer we have. It’s the most reliable path to social mobility in a modern society with a knowledge-based economy. Yet, in this time of sharply rising income inequality, this ladder to a better life isn’t accessible to all Canadians. This is both unfair and socially unjust.
2. Financial barriers to education impact Canada’s economic well-being.
Merit and a desire to learn should determine who goes to university. When the ability to pay becomes a deciding factor, then our country loses the chance to benefit from the skills and capabilities of many of its citizens. And because financial barriers to education reduce social mobility, inequality and poverty will increase, with all the associated social and economic costs to society, including increased health and justice system costs and worsening social tension.
3. Questions of access to education are more important today than ever before because higher education is increasingly becoming a standard job requirement.
While a couple of generations ago university may have been a luxury reserved for the children of the wealthy, in today’s world advanced education has a growing impact on people’s ability to compete in the labour market, on the types of jobs they obtain, and the incomes they are able to earn.
The BC government’s own estimates show that over this decade (2010 to 2020), about 35 per cent of new job openings will require university-level education, while 42 per cent are projected to require non-university post-secondary education, college or trades certificates. In contrast, occupations that require a high-school diploma or lower education will account for less than a quarter (22 per cent) of total projected job opportunities. The figures for Canada as a whole are very similar.
Yet, instead of increasing financial support for higher education, governments have steadily withdrawn from funding universities.
- Source: Statistics Canada and CAUBO
It’s time to start considering funding higher education through the public purse and making it available to all Canadians the way we do with elementary and secondary education.
4. Student loans don’t make up for high tuition fees.
We know this because students from lower income backgrounds continue to be underrepresented in universities despite the availability of student loans. Instead of improving access to education, student loans result in high debt loans for those few youth from lower and modest income families who manage to make it to university against the odds. The average student debt at graduation from a Bachelor’s degree program was $27,000 in 2009.
This is fundamentally inequitable, because it means that students who take out loans end up paying considerably more for the same education (through interest on their debt) than their peers whose parents can afford the tuition fees up front. In addition, Statistics Canada analysis shows that student debt continues to affect Canadians’ finances long after graduation with borrowers less likely to have savings and investments, and less likely to own their homes.
5. An educated society benefits everybody, not just the people who go to university.
An educated and highly skilled workforce is widely viewed as a crucial element for the continued economic and social growth and development of Canada. Higher education has an important role to play in developing the human capital needed by communities to succeed in the knowledge economy. For example, innovation and knowledge creation in an economy are linked to a strong research and development sector, drawing on the abilities of highly trained individuals.
The benefits of education go beyond increased job skills and earning potential; education provides people with the critical thinking skills they need to be active and confident participants in our communities, and in our democratic society. Better educated people participate more actively in their communities, have higher voter turnout rates and volunteer more – activities that make Canada a better place to live for all.
6. The fact that individuals gain from having higher education is not sufficient reason to rely on tuition (i.e. user fees) to finance education.
High school graduation also confers considerable earnings advantage over those who drop out, yet we don’t fund public schools through a user fee model. Why? Because the social and economic benefits of having a larger majority of the population with at least high school education outweighs the costs of our investment. The same case can be made for post-secondary education in today’s economy.
The tuition hikes we’ve seen over the last decade across Canada, which are now making their way to Quebec only perpetuate the problem: they increase the barriers faced by lower-income youth and ensure that only the children of the wealthy can afford to go to university. So if you don’t want to see scarce public dollars benefiting mostly students from affluent families, you should advocate for policies that increase the representation of lower-income students on our university campuses.
7. Education is a great investment for our public dollars: students repay the full cost of their education through taxes over their working careers.
The conventional argument that students are heavily subsidized because tuition fees do not cover the full costs of their education misses an important way in which students repay the cost of their education: through higher taxes in the decades after they graduate. To the extent that higher education is what leads graduates to earn more (and there is plenty of evidence that this is the case), the higher taxes that graduates pay are a direct result of their education. In a recent study published by the CCPA, I quantified these additional taxes paid by university graduates in BC and found that – as a group – BC university students pay more than double what their education costs through higher taxes.
In other words, education is a sound financial investment for our public dollars. That’s on top of all the social and economic benefits that will accrue from improving access to education.
Low tuition fees do not mean that hose who benefit from education get a free ride (they don’t!). It just means that instead of asking university graduates to pay the costs of their education up front, we’re asking them to pay once they start reaping the payoffs of their education. It’s a fairer way to recoup our public investment in education, and one we should consider adopting. We’ll have a healthier, better educated and more equitable society if we did.
Patrick // Jun 9, 2012 at 10:55 am
Excellent analysis. We need to be aware of a more insidious agenda at work though. High tuition fees confer advantages to the elite & their children: in a competitive post-grad environment their kids do better; high levels of debt for lower income grads compels them to be more compliant, less likely to be boat rockers and it is part of the continuing push towards privatization.
Doc Manderly // Jun 3, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Coupled with this is we need a massive job creation strategy…..
Including a component to help younger folks get into good quality jobs…
Iglika Ivanova // Jun 1, 2012 at 6:06 pm
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Keep them coming!
A Socialist in Canada » Seven reasons to support low tuition fees for higher education // Jun 1, 2012 at 4:17 pm
[...] By Iglika Ivanova, published on Policy Note, May 29, 2012 [...]
Grok // May 31, 2012 at 10:34 pm
The social arguments for an promoting an educated population are commendable, if not a bit idyllic. However, I’m not sure about the soundness of the author’s economic ones.
University grads in general make more than those who only finished high school, and they repay the initial investment in education through taxes after they get those higher paying jobs.
We still need bus drivers and janitors and food service employees. The fact is not every job requires a university level education. For those that do, the author presumes those jobs exist for grads when they come out of university.
Degree “inflation” is real. So many more people graduate with post-secondary degrees that the job market has become much more competitive for jobs that previously only required a high school education. It’s not enough to simply have a bachelor’s for many jobs, you now need a master’s to be competitive. Likewise for PhD and postdocs. The number of highly skilled jobs available has not kept pace with the increased number of university graduates. So then what? This problem is even more apparent in our current economic climate.
Iglika Ivanova // Jun 1, 2012 at 5:58 pm
Grok, you’re right — not all jobs require university level education. But if you look at the numbers, you’ll find that we already have plenty of people with only high school education to fill them. Unemployment rates are significantly higher for those with only high school education than for those with bachelor’s degrees (without including MAs & higher degrees). Here’s the unemployment rates for Canada by education level in 2011 (from Statistics Canada):
- less than high school diploma: 15.4%
- high school diploma: 7.9%
- non-university post-secondary: 5.9%
- university (Bachelor): 5.1%
- above Bachelor: 4.5%
Those with bachelor’s degrees are more likely to be employed, more likely to work full-time, and earn higher wages on average than people with high school education only. I show that this is true by gender and age group as well in the section on the Economic Gains from Education in the Paid in Full Update (I don’t think I can post graphs in the comments). Please take a look and let me know if you have any questions/comments after looking at the data.
I have reviewed the recent studies on the returns to education and the evidence points to increasing returns to Bachelor’s degrees despite the fact that we have more graduates (see, for example this recent study by University of Montreal economist Brahim Boudarbat and his UBC colleagues Thomas Lemieux and Craig Riddell).
If education inflation were a real problem, then the increase of the supply of graduates relative to those without degrees would drive the wages of graduates down (supply and demand, right!). However, the gap has grown, not narrowed, between the wages of university graduates and those with high school education only. This suggest that the growth in the numbers of university graduates is driven by demand from the labour market.
This is confirmed by job creation projections like this one from Work BC, which show that the vast majority of new jobs created (78%) will require some form of post-secondary education.
Technology and other labour market changes have made advanced education much more important to how we do work than it used to be even 30 years ago. It’s only natural that the basic educational requirements for success in a society would change as the society changes. There was a time when literacy and numeracy wasn’t all that important for most people, now everybody goes to school for 12 years.
france // May 31, 2012 at 9:40 pm
All post-secondary education, university and college, should be readily accessible to all dedicated students. I suggest students only pay modest registration fees as is the practice in some European countries such as France.
Kyle // May 31, 2012 at 1:19 pm
Too bad it is an article that doesn’t show both sides of the problem and the solutions. You could easily say that based on the same logic used in the articale that if they pay higher taxes afterwards, that they would still be less ‘likely’ to get that home everyone is looking for after graduation.
Iglika Ivanova // Jun 1, 2012 at 5:24 pm
@ Kyle: The problem with high upfront tuition fees is that they present a comparatively larger burden to youth from lower income families than those from higher income families. Lower income students end up having to take on more student loans and their decision to get an education has lasting financial consequences that people with wealthier parents do not face. It’s precisely this difference that’s the problem.
Funding education through progressive taxes avoids that — lower income students don’t have to pay more than higher income students. Everybody pays taxes based on the amount of income they earn after graduation, not based on the amount their parents had before he/she enrolled in school.
The Progressive Economics Forum » Seven reasons why you should support the Quebec students’ call for low tuition fees // May 31, 2012 at 11:13 am
[...] posted on PolicyNote.ca Share and [...]
Peter // May 31, 2012 at 8:28 am
A powerful analysis of how society benefits from a fair and rational educational system. Too bad the rich are so intent on getting richer by cutting their taxes and making more money from student loans, no matter the hardship it creates.