Quebec tuitions as seen from Ontario

It was back to school at Quebec universities last week, not just for industrious students who desire to learn but for noisy and deluded masked protesters intent on shutting the classes down.

Banging pots, blowing air horns and pulling fire alarms, the demonstrators railed against tuition fees they claim are too high. And if that mob gets its way, its message of discontent and disruption which deafened Quebec for months earlier this year will resound across Ontario campuses, too. Just a few weeks ago, malcontent Quebec students toured Ontario, trying to persuade their counterparts at universities in Guelph, London, Toronto and Kingston to join the crusade for cheaper tuition fees.

The Quebecers should have saved their breath. Ontario will not provide fertile ground for the misplaced rage and foolish sense of entitlement that infected La Belle Province. And this will be true even though Ontario students pay more than twice as much for a university education as do the students in Quebec.

It’s a fact that in Ontario and most of Canada the cost of higher education for students has steadily mounted in recent decades. And it is obvious that this poses a challenge to a lot of today’s students, many of whom are graduating with punishing levels of debt.

But we think Ontario students know that the value of their education in today’s changing world makes it worth the cost. And the numbers bear this out. While critics say Ontario’s tuition fees are too high, there is no evidence these fees form an impediment to a higher education for most people.

The trend in university enrolment over the past decade in Ontario has gone in one direction — up. In the first decade of this century, undergraduate enrolment in Ontario universities increased by 50 per cent. Enrolment has kept increasing since then. First year enrolment will rise three per cent this fall at University of Waterloo and 3.2 per cent at Wilfrid Laurier University. Across Ontario it is set to rise by 2.4 per cent.

Nor is Ontario unique. University enrolment is soaring across Canada, both in terms of actual student numbers and as a percentage of the overall population. Only 10 per cent of young Canadians attended university in 1980. Today 25 per cent of this vital demographic group is enrolled in university, according to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. Where once universities were enclaves of the elite and wealthy, now they are open to all. Indeed, last fall and for the first time, more than one million undergraduate students were enrolled in Canadian universities.

This is something to celebrate, not protest. In economic terms, a university degree pays handsomely for graduates. According to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, university graduates, on average, earn $1.3 million more than a high school graduate over their working lives and $1 million more than a college graduate. More than four out of 10 university students graduate with no debt at all, while a third of those who have a debt owe less than $12,000. You couldn’t buy a new car for that.

While society as a whole benefits from the skills and talents of its university graduates, they gain spectacularly for their efforts. It’s only right that those graduates pay a healthy portion of their education costs rather than expecting neighbours without the degree to pay more or all of the bill. One of the more inane proposals of the Parti Quebecois in the just-ended Quebec provincial election was that university education should be free.

But any government that assumes the full cost of university education will have to find a lot of money somewhere. In these times of dangerously high deficits in many provinces, such as Ontario and Quebec, it’s difficult to see where that money would come from. Yes, the working world can seem a daunting, formidable place for many Ontario university students today. In the classrooms, they enjoy a pretty good deal. To their credit, most of these students appreciate this.