Your debt is your future

Jenny Tang

“Everyone has the right to education … and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit,” says the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In Canada, however, higher education is only accessible to the financially rich or to the student swimming in a pile of debt.  

Financial debt is synonymous with any student pursuing a post-secondary education and it isn’t unusual to owe thousands of dollars upon graduation.

In attempts to keep pace with constantly rising tuition fees, compulsory fees (student association, athletic facilities and health services), expensive textbooks and the cost of living, students are forced to apply for OSAP and lines of credit. 

Higher education is driven by money and blind politics.

OSAP is given to those with high education costs and low financial resources, according to the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. With hundreds lining up at Algonquin’s Financial Aid office every year, there is obviously a large number of students who cannot afford tuition. Now picture all the financial aid offices in every college and university across Ontario. The government must take a closer look at these numbers and decide if what students really need is another increase in tuition fees such as the recent 4.7 per cent rise.

The Ontario government has finally followed through with the new Textbook and Technology Grant this semester for students who have applied for OSAP, but the $150 mail-in rebate is nothing compared to the hundreds of dollars spent on textbooks and supplies such as lab equipment, media devices and software.

For example, for a student enrolled in the two-year journalism program at Algonquin in 2007, tuition will amount to $5710.70, and this is on top of $35 for a graduation fee, $70 for the planned student centre, $602 for the Students Association, $40 for health services fees and $246.16 for health plan fees, $200 for the IT fees, and $600 for laptop mandatory programs. Textbooks and software such as Adobe were approximately $1,000 and many students had to buy a laptop, which came in around $1,000.

This comes to a grand total of $9,503.86. Somewhere in there, the $150 grant will bring financial relief. (And as a side note, tuition was increased by $111.97 for first-year students and $55.99 for second-year students.)

Tuition fees will vary from one program to another, but additional costs (with the exception of the laptop fees) are the same for full-time students. These are a great deal of numbers to grasp, but when it’s broken down, it is overwhelming.

Another initiative taken by the Ontario government is the promise to invest $35 million to the future Skilled Trades Building. While it will be a great pay-off once the building is complete, there are currently thousands of students whom are barely scraping by.  

“Education shouldn’t be a debt sentence,” according to the Drop Fees campaign website (dropfees.ca), but if numbers continue to rise, we’ll always be slaves to paying back loans and interest fees. 

Rather than remaining quiet and dutifully handing over thousands of dollars of borrowed money and hoping for McGuinty to take action now, we must raise our voices to drop the fees.

On Nov. 5, a protest will be taking place on campuses across the province and this will be our chance for change. If students decide to choose apathy and laziness over activism now, it will take its toll later when interest is still being paid off a decade later after graduation. Complaining won’t change the amount of money owing.