Sarah Mursic
Contributor
If you weren’t a hopeless student before, you may be one now. Statistics Canada has confirmed that the average annual tuition fee for undergraduate students has risen by 4.3 per cent since last year. In Ontario, the hike was the highest at 5.1 per cent and the lowest was 1.4 per cent in Manitoba.
Tuition rates have gone up approximately 50 per cent in the past 10 years, and if we stay on the same track, a decade from now students will be in even worse conditions.
Currently, students are put into a situation where they can’t learn unless they have money, and even with family contributions and part-time jobs, sometimes it’s simply not enough anymore. And though student loans and government financial aid such as OSAP are meant to help, they are only putting us into severe debt by the time we graduate. Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students Roxanne Dubois believes that students will be on the verge of bankruptcy before they even sit down for their first interview.
Though the rise in cost is definitely an issue, what makes students weary is the fact that we live in a world where the necessity for some sort of post-secondary education is so crucial. According to Human Resources and Development Canada, over the next 10 years about two-thirds (65.9%) of all jobs will require post-secondary education—university, college, or apprenticeship training.
We shouldn’t have to choose whether or not to learn based on our ability to pay off a twenty-to- thirty-thousand-dollar loan when we graduate. We shouldn’t be put in a position where we can’t pursue our desired career because the program is too expensive. If post-secondary education is such an essential part of our future society, then it should not a financial burden—it should be a right.
