No Good Reason for Tuition Fees

There is no good reason for tuition fees.  University administrators have long argued that, due to the inadequacies of government funding, there is no choice but to charge tuition fees. These administrators have phrase their support of fees and fee increases as a reluctant necessity of life; something that any reasonable person would understand. But there is something more important that tuition fees allow these same administrators: it allows them a form of flexibility that they would not have if they relied directly upon government funding.  This fiscal flexibility is, it would seem, the more fundamental reason that administrators have long supported tuition fees. With regular increases.

Tuition fees are not the only non-government funding that university administrators seek out. Large dollar donors are also high the list of admin wants. The plus 5 - that is, more than 5 million dollar donor- is especially valued. Donors, rather like governments (but without the political oversight) come with wishes and desires. They have their own pet projects and their own vanity that requires being assuaged.  Donors create a climate in which the university can both break free from a democratic government’s policy framework and create a culture of venerating people for their wealth, not their merit.  

If there are any good reasons for tuition fees, that rationale has to be something other then simply making up for a lack of government funding.  

There is the market idea that a student is purchasing a commodity - an educational certificate and the accompanying experience. This argument translates education into a transaction between the university as vendor and the student as client mediated by a cash for certificate exchange.  If we were to follow this Milton Friedmanesque logic to it’s end tuition should be allowed to float to the level the market can bear. Advocates of this argument say criticism of tuition is misplaced. They argue that by allowing tuition to rise to it’s appropriate market price, a social decision can be made to allocate some of the surplus toward funding meritorious students who lack their own resources. The contemporary variant of this argument says that this way diversity can encouraged (wherein they assume those of colour are more likely to be impoverished than the supposedly non-diverse wealthier students). This view combines a paternalizing idea of charity with market moralism - that is those with more deserve more, the unfortunate bright student should be helped up so that they might also become a ‘success’ and join the ranks of the deserving wealthy.

While the Freidmanesque view provides the underlying logic of tuition fees, in actual practice fees have long been tied to a mid-range compromise between market ideals and social expectations.  That is, tying a belief that a student (as a user or consumer) is obligated to pay some portion of their education to the expectation that post secondary should be reasonably accessible to any citizen. This relies in part on an idea that post-secondary education is not a right, but a privilege, maybe even a luxury contradictorily tied to a notion that there is some social benefit in sharing this privilege. . This is what justifies holding fees for categories of 'insiders' lower 'outsiders'. This is what justifies the current NDP government's waiving of fees for youth who were wards of the state.  But is this pragmatic balance between a users obligation to contribute with a societies expectation of accessibility really a good reason for keeping tuition fees?  What is the principle that we, as a society, demonstrate in this model of paying for post secondary education?

Contemporary society, more than at any time in the past, expects productive members of society to have some degree of post secondary education. Rare is the job that does not require a certificate or degree be it trades, technical, academic, or professional.  We live within a certificated society and our transforming workforce requires highly educated participants.  Is there not a societal obligation and responsibility to provide our youth and young adults with the appropriate educational background in a way that will not beggar them? I think there is. 

It’s time that we simply abolish tuition fees across the post secondary sector.  Our university leadership can play an important role in facilitating this transformation. They are the ones -from BCIT to Emily Carr to UBC- who have been loudly announcing the benefit, the need for a highly educated workforce ready to move bravely into a new wave of economic transformations.  Post secondary education is now, more than even a necessity.  We no longer expect people to pay for public K-12 education. That argument was settled long ago when it became clear that a high school education was a requirement for an effective labour force; today the first level of post secondary is ever bit as necessary as high school graduation was for our parents.

I will be doing my part of December 5th by voting against tuition increases at UBC. I will also be advocating that our Board of Governors and our university’s president, Santa Ono, explicitly, publicly, and loudly, calls on the government to begin the process of abolishing tuition fees across our post secondary system.

The Adshade Affair

Update: As of November 22, 2019.  At the board meeting I introduced a motion regarding the problems with the senate managed election process (see below). At the meeting the Board Secretariat advised that the board had no jurisdiction. Nonetheless, I persisted (with the support of Dr Ghoussoub) and laid out the concern that the management of the  nomination process raised concerns over the integrity of the election and that in turned raised concerns with the integrity of the boards functioning.  After some discussion Board Chair M. Korenberg offered to draft a revised motion that would address our concerns while respecting jurisdictional matters. He offered to bring that motion back at the end of the meeting which he did. The revised motion was then moved by myself, seconded by Ghoussoub, and then duly passed.
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Governance transparency at UBC moves in haltering steps forward and then lurches backwards. While significant improvements have been made on shifting work into the open sessions we continue to see closed doors on democracy and transparency. Special working groups operating outside the standard board and committee structure proliferate. This is mitigated by making most of their materials publicly available. Meeting rules get 'improved' in such a way as to limit the flow of information. Now we are facing an potential electoral scandal with regards to faculty representatives on the board of governors.

It has become apparent, via social media, that acclaimed economist, Dr. Marinaa Adshade submitted a nomination to run for a faculty position on the board of governors and had their nomination rejected twice: first by the governance officer in the UBC administration running the election, and then by the appeal process.

We know nothing other than the information posted on social media about this affair. However, the entire process, locked in a formalistic administrative space, raises concerns about interference by the registrars office in the election of representatives of faculty. We already have serious issues with how faculty are included, heard, and engaged in governance matters of this university.  This affair threatens to push things even further off track.

In light of this I will be putting an emergency motion to the governance committee this Friday to the effect:

Whereas the integrity of the governance process at UBC relies upon fair and open electoral processes, and
Whereas the current system is hidden behind administrative chambers,
Be it resolved that the UBC Board of Governors review the current process for the election of faculty representatives and
Be it further resolved that the the board review the specific case whereby Dr. Adhsade's nomination was rejected.

#OKBoomer - banning live tweeting & photography

This past little while a new tag has pop up - #OKBoomer.  It's framed as an intergenerational boundary marker, but I see it more along the lines of a critique of those who cling unreasonably to what the way things are becuase change scarers them or threatens their sense of entitlement.

As we get older we do get set in our ways; it's hard to change. Especially hard if changing means we might loses some sense of control or privilege.  Often time taking the risk to make a change doesn't actually diminish us, it helps expand our world. But yes, making changes, adapting new approaches, and giving up the way things have always been can feel pretty uncomfortable.

It's also unsettling when new approaches and techniques arise and we GenXers or Boomers haven't gotten onboard yet. We can see that there are people doing stuff around us but we unsure of what they are doing, what are they saying, are they talking about us? A few of us might try the new thing, but a lot of us rarely go past looking, resting confident in the belief that our power and place will keep up in control.  Social media is a lot like that. I find that many my age and older are happy floating around in  the shallow pool that is facebook but avoid the slightly rougher waters of twitter. There are other things on the horizon but they seem more like storm clouds sitting off in the distance, looming in vague and threatening ways.

Social media is a reality of our world. There are a lot of people who don't like it. There are a lot of people who really love it. Then there's the rest of us in the middle kinda of liking it, kinda hating it. But it seems that the more Boomer one gets the less likely they are to like or appreciate social media, especially if it lives outside their direct control.  So we are starting to see a lot of rules about social media and related technologies.

I used to try to control digital technologies in my classes. It's a distraction I thought - it's disrespectful I fulminated! So, since I was the prof I made rules. I tried to take back the classroom, to remake it into something it likely never was - quiet, peaceful, attentive.  But right from the start the rules ran into problems. Some students have accommodations. They might need a laptop to write their notes on. Others need to record the lectures. So then we have to make sub-rules so as to respect the accommodations but not single out the particular students. Then there is the policing. No rule is any good unless it is policed. And allow me to assure you there are as many explanations for transgressions as there are students in my course. But, as time wore on I found myself using more and more computer mediated devices and techniques int he classroom.  It got to the point I would be asking a student using their laptop 'illegally' to do a google search for this or that, and on it went. While I still consider it rude to be texting and talking on a phone during a class I am far more relaxed about the intrusion of social media and computers in the learning space - in fact UBC encourages and supports a wide array of iPlatforms for learning.