Reading material!

This weekend, I will be attending a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Canadian Federation of Students - British Columbia Component, at the University of Victoria. To prepare for this meeting, I assembled the minutes of previous Executive Committee meetings that were on file at the Kwantlen Student Association. After doing so, I thought that a good close to the day would involve scanning said documents and posting them online! They can be viewed here:

http://www.studentunion.ca/cfs/bc/exec/index.html

In other news....

Alex Usher comments here on the unforseen negative effects of the decision of the government of Prince Edward Island to reduce tuition fees by 10% [PDF]. (The government also committed to maintaining tuition fees to the relate of inflation for the next four years.) Usher suggests that because the provincial loan forgiveness program would continue to forgive students loans higher than $6000, students receiving such loan forgiveness would not see any benefit from a fee reduction.

The problem - as I see it - is this: if what is happening to "Jill" in Usher's story is happening to lots of people in Prince Edward Island, then the net effect is that the provincial government will be spending less money on its student aid program, since so many students would be qualifying for less financial aid. Now, I can only presume that the officials in the Provincial Treasury and the Department of Education have anticipated this effect. They have two choices:

1. Maintain the threshold for loan forgiveness at its current level, thus disbursing less financial aid to students, thus reducing the budget of the PEI loan-forgiveness program (perhaps to fund the tuition cut?), OR
2. Decrease the threshold for loan forgiveness, but maintaining the loan-forgiveness budget at its current level. In this case, the tuition cut would have to be funded by some other souce (tax hike, cut to some other government service, university capital freeze, etc.).
   

If government opts for option 1, then Usher's analysis is perfect: government really is robbing "Jill" to buy votes from "Jack" and his parents. But if government opts for option 2, then I don't see Usher's analysis of the perverse effects of a tuition cut working out quite as he suggests....

UK Students told: turn up or face expulsion

The Guardian has reported that a number of British universities have forced their students to sign legal contracts as a condition of taking courses. These contracts specify that the students will observe "good behaviour" and will regularly attend lectures and tutorials.

But the National Union of Students has condemned these contracts, calling them "one-sided," as they do not place any obligations on universities (for example, in terms of quality of teaching).

When I was enrolled in the Technical University of British Columbia (R.I.P.), we were required to sign a contract as a condition of enrollment. However, if I recall correctly, this contract merely required us not to engage in crime, academic dishonesty, etc., without imposing any specific requirements to attend lectures. British Columbia courts have ruled that there exists a contractual agreement between the student and the post-secondary institution, defined by the official literature (calendars, etc.) produced by the institution, but (TechBC aside) there haven't been any actual contracts in place in BC universities.

Does your post-secondary institution force students to sign contracts as a condition of enrollment? If so - what do these contracts contain?

Eleven Universities Stop Participating in Maclean's Rankings

Eleven Canadian universities have sent a letter [PDF] to Maclean's magazine, informing the magazine that they "will not be participating in the 2006 Maclean's questionnaire." They objected to the "arbitrary" way in which multiple variables (such as class sizes, library capacity, and reputation) were combined together into a single ranking. They objected in particular to the "reputation" value, which is calculated from a survey that has been receiving a very low response rate.

However, Maclean's is not backing down. Tony Keller, managing editor of special projects for Maclean's, promised that the rankings would continue, and that data from the eleven withdrawing universities would be retrieved from "other sources" or from access to information requests. The latter strategy could prove to be expensive for the withdrawing universities, since all requests for information under freedom-of-information laws need to be processed by specialized staff. (Or at least that is the case at SFU....)

The decision by eleven universities to stop participating in the survey may seriously affect the survey. Nine of the eleven universities are classified as "Medical/Doctoral" universities by Maclean's university (according to their 2005 survey results), comprising a clear majority of "Medical/Doctoral" universities in Canada. Simon Fraser University, a "Comprehensive" school, and the University of Lethbridge, a "Primarily Undergraduate" university, make up the remainder of the anti-rankings alliance.

Council of the Federation

Here is the news that I have found regarding the recent meeting of the Council of the Federation and post-secondary education:

• Competing for Tomorrow: A Strategy for Postsecondary Education and Skills Training in Canada (PDF) - Council of the Federation document

• Premiers Must Engage the Federal Government to Restore Funding to Post-Secondary Education - CFS press release
  
• Premiers' Post-Secondary Education Strategy is Lacking - CFS press release
  
• Lack of Progress Stalls Commitments on Education - CASA press release
• Comprehensive strategy needed for post-secondary education - CAUT press release (prior to the meeting of the Council)
  
• Students concerned national vision and funding for higher education will be bogged down by fiscal imbalance finger pointing - OUSA press release (prior to the meeting of the Council)

Canada's student financial aid system in 'crisis' by 2010: think tank

The Canadian branch of the Educational Policy Institute (EPI) has released a new report, entitled "Student Aid Time Bomb: The Coming Crisis in Canada’s Financial Aid System" (PDF document). The report claims that by 2010, Canada's student financial aid system may be underfunded by as much as $800 million. The report suggests that there are four pressures being placed on the system:

1. By increasingly devoting funds towards the subsidization of advanced education without targetting those funds to low-income students, governments (both federal and provincial) are left without money to put towards means-tested financial aid. This sort of subsidization includes direct government subsidization of the costs of education; tuition tax credits; and the subsidization of individual savings (i.e. the Canada Education Savings Grant).
   
2. The Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP) is increasing its costs dramatically due to increasing student demand and increasing interest rates, but there does not appear to be much political will to increase funding for the program.
3. The Canadian Millenium Scholarship Foundation (CMSF) is due to 'expire' in 2009, and political pressures may mean that this foundation might not be renewed.
4. The Conservative government, due to its 'open federalism' (re: means of gaining the support of the Bloc Quebecois), may be transferring responsability for student financial aid to the provinces. The report does not disparage this idea in principle, but warns that such an upheaval would be a "distraction" from the real issue: the need to increase student financial aid funding.

Sifted into the report one will find jabs directed (primarily) against the Canadian Federation of Students. In the report's commentary on the "distraction" that would be caused by transferring responsibility for student financial aid to the provinces, it is suggested that much of the opposition to such a move on the part of national post-secondary student organizations would be pure self-preservation: "[CFS and CASA] would be left with precious little to do if student aid policy were decisively dispersed to the ten provincial capitals" (p. 28). More bluntly, the report complains that provincial intiatives to freeze or regulation tuition fees came due to their decision to heed "the ill-conceived and transparently self-interested advice of student groups" (p. 12).

The CFS responded with a press release declaring that the report was "misleading," that it "distort[ed] the legitimate pressures placed on Canada's student financial aid system to justify tuition fee increases," and that was intended to influence the upcoming meeting of the Council of the Federation. "This isn’t research. This is a public relations campaign against affordable public education," said Amanda Aziz, National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students. CASA had no response (on its website, at least).

All this in spite of the fact that the CFS and the EPI report actually agree on a number of issues. First, "Student Aid Time Bomb" (p. 12) and the CFS both question the merits of the Canada Education Savings Grant. Second, "Student Aid Time Bomb" (p. 17-18 et al.) and the CFS both agree that tuition tax credits are a poor way of expanding access to post-secondary education. Third, the primary argument of "Student Aid Time Bomb" - that Canada's student financial aid system needs more money in order to assist low-income students effectively - is one that the Federation would likely readily agree to.

That said, there are clear ideological differences at play here. "Student Aid Time Bomb" describes the trend towards tuition fee regulation, tuition tax credits, and other non-means-tested subsidizations of students' education as "Sleepwalking Towards Universality" - "universality" being held in a rather dim light.

But ideological differences are not the only reasons for this quarrel. One of the author's of the EPI report is Alex Usher, Vice-President of EPI and the original National Director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA). He has also written for EPI "Much Ado About a Very Small Idea" (PDF), concerning Income-Continent Loan Repayment schemes. This report was throughly savaged by then-CFS National Director of Research (and current CAUT employee) Michael Conlon in his report, "Income Contingent Loans: Inequity and Injustice on the Installment Plan" (PDF). Conlon devoted an entire three-paragraph footnote (p. 12, footnote 10) detailing Usher's involvement in CASA and suggesting that Usher and CASA were formed as pawns of the Canadian Liberal government. In particular, Conlon claims that Lloyd Axworthy (then Human Resources and Social Development minister) sought to undermine the CFS by establishing "an unrepresentative minority voice opposing the Canadian Federation of Students' call for lower tuition fees and a national system of grants." Axworthy currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Educational Policy Institute.

Personally, I agree with the proposal of Spencer Keys (PDF) that governments should agree to set student tuition fees as a set percentage of the total cost of a student's post-secondary education, and then allowing fees to rise (or fall) provided that government funding also rises (or falls) proportionately. I also believe that it is important for our various lobbyists to present a united front on those issues where there is a strong policy consensus: that the Canada Educational Savings Grant should probably be scrapped (or at least seriously reformed), that tuition tax credits are a bad idea, and that there is a very substantial need to overhaul and renew the financial aid system.
..........
UPDATE (2006-07-25): The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) has issued a press release in response to "Student Aid Time Bomb", essentially agreeing with the Federation's press release but using softer language and placing a greater emphasis on the need for more direct institutional funding.