Making a difference

I found the commentary “Just another day at the office” by Michael Silicz to be fraught with mistakes and unfounded cheap shots at UMSU.

Ultimately, UMSU relies on student involvement, something we’ve seen plenty of over the past few weeks. The day of action on Nov. 5 was a great way to get the attention of governments and the public, as was the federal election awareness campaign last month. Yet these are only part of a much larger campaign strategy that includes member education, student surveys and dialogue, lobbying governments and administration, conferences, communications and much more.

None of UMSU’s support for reduced tuition fees is dogmatic. It’s based on some simple realities and on peer-reviewed and government research showing the importance of financial barriers to post-secondary education.
As for helping students help themselves: great idea. UMSU tries hard to do just that. In fact, this is any students’ union’s raison d’être. In reading “Just another day at the office,” I am reminded of the many concrete victories we have achieved together as students:

— A one-year reprieve from tuition fee hikes (until fall 2009) — the direct result of a concerted campaign from April 1-9, 2008. The Doer government basically had to rewrite its budget speech because students, parents and many other community members succeeded in convincing it to give the policy about-face some more thought. Enter the Levin Commission on Tuition Fees and Accessibility. Students have a chance this year to push for a better tuition fee policy.

—A one per cent reduction in student loan interest rates, the direct result of the Fix Student Aid campaign organized by UMSU, as part of the Canadian Federation of Students.

— In the 1990s, the big banks were involved in student loans, and got out because they couldn’t make big enough profits. The new federal student grants won by the student movement, UMSU included, will help ease student debt woes in a big way.

— UMSU members already fund one of the most generous student-run endowments in the country. Check that off the list too.
Besides UMSU and the Canadian Federation of Students, no other organization in Manitoba is campaigning consistently to government on these issues. These recent victories, added to the many of years past, show a pretty good record of success. But we need to keep the pressure on governments, work with governments and administration, and, yes, get more students out to vote. Obama’s victory in the U.S. presidential election shows us that young people can be a force in elections, and we need to learn from that.

Now for some basic economics. It is precisely in times of economic downturn when governments should, and usually do (whatever their political stripe), invest in public programs like education. This helps stimulate the economy, or at least prevent massive unemployment and depression. Education, more so than almost any other social services besides preventative health care, in turn, reduces reliance on other social services (like welfare, jails, policing, health care, and family services, etc.). Education is key to a healthy life overall, as well as to a better income. An investment by government, in good times or bad, in core social programs is always money well spent. One dollar invested in today’s students translates into money saved by society in general. It’s always difficult to say how much, but the returns in an augmented tax base alone are significant.

Speaking of taxes, it’s important to note, as has researcher Hugh Mackenzie, that students already pay for their university education, through our progressive system of taxation. If you go to university and get a decent job, you will pay back the system via income tax. Making students pay up-front only shuts middle- and low-income students out of the economic benefits, or punishes them with student debt for their efforts to improve their prospects. Again, in a global economic crisis, that is especially nonsensical.

Finally, on the economic issue, a warning for all readers against private lines of credit. Yes, as the author suggests, private lines of credit are “critically different” than student loans. Yes, students rely increasingly on lines of credit. But in no way are they a better option from a personal finances point of view. Bank lines of credit bear interest from the moment they are negotiated, whereas government student loans bear no interest for the debtor until after graduation or leaving school. Thanks to last year’s Fix Student Aid campaign organized by UMSU and other students’ unions in Manitoba, interest rates on Manitoba student loans are now one per cent lower. For all its drawbacks, government student aid is a far better option, especially as you may be eligible for extended interest relief, debt remission (forgiveness), and bursaries and grants. A recent article in the business section of the Winnipeg Free Press credits students’ unions in Manitoba with raising awareness about the fact that, if tuition fees continue to increase, all the Education Savings Grants and RESPs in the world will be insufficient for the average person to put their children through university.

In the end, yes, UMSU’s support for tuition fee rollbacks, grants for students, and better funding for universities and colleges is ideological, but certainly not dogmatic. There is a big difference between dogma and principled action. The policy positions of UMSU are based on decades of research and experience, on public opinion polling and, most importantly, the basic principle that financial barriers, including up-front fees, should not determine educational attainment. That is a goal that most Canadians share and there is no shame in holding a principled position on important issues, year after year, no matter what tricks and election carrots-on-sticks politicians may put forward.

So, to the Manitoban, I respectfully disagree with the portrayal of students’ efforts to help themselves. Please spare us the diatribes and let’s get on with a dialogue about the issues. Students deserve at least that.

Jonny Sopotiuk is the president of the University of Manitoba Students’ Union.