Tuition debate gongshow
by Ashley Martin
the Carillon
Last Wednesday in the Lazy Owl, concerned students gathered to watch a gong show tuition freeze debate, which was sponsored by the Arts Students’ Association.

The February 2 debate presented six student speakers: Michael Sherar, Mike Burton, Shaun O’Dell and Matt Barton, all of whom are against the idea of a freeze; and Malin Hansen and Leah Sharpe, the University of Regina Students’ Union (URSU) vice president of external affairs, who are advocates for a freeze.

The debate centred on the idea of a tuition freeze, which has been a heated issue on campus since URSU, along with the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union (USSU), announced in November their intent to lobby the provincial government for a freeze.

Debate from the balcony -photo by Ashley Martin

The first issue presented at the debate concerned education as a right or a privilege.

“Everyone should be able to come here and get an education,” Hansen argued. However, regardless of education being a right, Barton and Sherar believe a tuition freeze isn’t going to enable students to come to school.

“A tuition freeze just helps the people who are already [attending university],” Sherar said. “We can afford to be here.” Barton added that $500 isn’t going to “allow poor people to buy books and go to school.”

Burton emphasized there is no such thing as free education.

“There’s a lie that’s propagated where, in some places, everyone goes to university and it’s utopia,” he said.

The second question of the debate addressed the issue of tuition freezes and quality of education.

“If we’re going to pay more we should get a better education,” Burton said.

Barton emphasized this point, saying, since over half of the U of R’s faculty consists of sessional professors, it negatively affects the student’s opportunity to learn. Sharpe disagreed.

“The other way you’re getting less out of education is if you’re working three jobs to pay for it and you’re tired when you get to class.

“Tuition fees increasing does not impact quality [of education]. Across the world, the minute institutions allow fees to increase, government subsidies and government grants for the institutions go down. The per capita funding per student decreases as tuition increases. So that means less and less money is going into your education as our tuition fees increase, which seems illogical, but that’s what happens.”

Sharpe pointed out since 1990, tuition fees have increased 217 per cent, and student debt has tripled.

Despite Sharpe’s arguments for the freeze, the majority of the debaters, as well some spectators, believed the idea of a freeze to be flawed.

“It’s way too simplistic in just saying ‘freeze tuition, let’s give everyone an education,’” O’Dell said.

Sherar added, “If we just ask the government to throw money at it, we’re not really addressing the problem.”

Cassie Ozog, a second-year women’s studies major, was against the freeze for a different reason.

“I think that a lot of students here are agreeing with a tuition freeze simply because they haven’t been given another option,” she said.

Burton provided several alternatives to a freeze. He said increased accessibility to student loans, as well as the institution of an income contingent loan repayment plan, in which students could pay off their loans as their income allowed, would be a good start. He also addressed that other factors, not primarily high tuition, are the cause of low attendance at university.

“We should find ways to tailor programs towards people from different backgrounds. It’s not simply making tuition cheaper that’s going to get more people coming here. There are socioeconomic factors outside of income that prevent people from coming to university.”

Barton said tuition increase should be indexed to the rate of inflation.

The tuition freeze debate was a part of the ASA Debate Series. With the debate, they hoped to help cure student apathy. “I think URSU every year has trouble with apathy, and we thought this would get people talking about [the rally and the issue of tuition freeze],” said Shawn Fraser, an ASA member.

Angela Scott, another ASA member, added, “We knew URSU would be having the freeze tuition rally, and we thought this would be a good idea to represent both sides of the issue instead of just the one day at a rally.”