While this may seem an impossible feat to accomplish in a four-hour tour around campus, the University of Toronto Student Union saw the National Day of Action as an opportunity “to get students questioning why they’re actually paying so much for education,” said UTSU VP External Shaun Shepherd.
The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) has not organized a National Day of Action since 2007, but the government’s failure to provide a 30 per cent tuition reduction for all Ontario post-secondary students prompted UTSU to organize Wednesday’s event. “Students want their promises kept by the Liberal Party,” said Sandy Hudson, Chairperson for the Ontario division of the CFS, “[they don’t want] a grant scheme that makes it seem like we were deceived in the election.”
While eligible university students receive $1,600 back in tuition paid, two-thirds of Ontario’s post-secondary students, including part-time, international and graduate students, are excluded from the rebate. According to a report issued by the CFS, when accounting for inflation and population growth, cash transfer payments from the federal government to fund post-secondary education are roughly $1.3 billion short of the level of funding two decades ago.
However, the provincial government may not be the only party implicated in the increasingly high fees, as the university administration also bears some responsibility in the issue. “I want to see them [the University] lobbying for more public funds,” said Shepherd.
“We’re not just talking about accessible education, we’re talking about quality education,” said James Nugent, chief spokesperson of CUPE 3092, the trade union that represents the university’s education workers. Members of CUPE 3092 saw the National Day of Action as a platform to address their concerns. The union, which has been in negotiations with the university administration over the past seven months, set a strike deadline for February 24.
“The Administration is not taking the negotiation process seriously,” said Nugent, explaining that the university does not recognize tutorial size as an issue. With a quarter of tutorials at U of T containing over 50 students, instructors cannot provide them with sufficient support, especially when they must concentrate on the research that brought them to the institution in the first place. “We get the same amount of pay, but they [U of T] are asking us to do hundreds and hundreds of hours more.”
“What they [the provincial government] worry about is access, not quality,” said President of the U of T Faculty Association (UTFA) Professor George Luste, who expressed concern about the stagnant number of faculty positions as university enrollment continues to grow. “The students and the faculty are all in this together . . . to teach and to create research,” he said.
Despite support from the UTFA and a letter from the Office of the Vice Provost for Students— which called on professors to excuse participating students from academic engagements “when possible”—the number of students only amounted to a fraction of the total university population. Hudson claimed, “We had a whole bunch of people who were scared to leave class or who had part-time jobs who couldn’t make it.”
According to Shepherd, “We actually came close to 5,000 [students]; enough students to fill the circle at Con Hall.” Shepherd attributed the relatively low turnout to a lack of “strong campus life,” and believes the next step is to get more students involved in talking about the increasing price of post-secondary education.
