9 million adult learners also forgotten in the “budget for everyone”

OTTAWA – At a time of skyrocketing tuition fees and student debt, as well as chronic underfunding for adult literacy programs, the Conservative plan to build a “knowledge advantage” for Canada takes one small step forward and two steps back, said NDP Post-Secondary Education Critic Denise Savoie (Victoria).

“With over one million students in Canada, this budget directly affects only one thousand,” said Savoie. “There’s more money to attract students from other countries than to increase access for prospective Canadian college, apprenticeship, undergraduate, medical or law students combined.”

Savoie dismissed the minor tweaks to the RESP system, which offer no benefit for parents who cannot afford to save, or who can make only modest contributions.

“We have $40 million for high-income parents of young children, and $0 for low and middle-income students and families who have to pay tuition this September,” said Savoie. “We’re unfairly asking many parents to choose between feeding or educating their kids.”

To make matters worse, students were explicitly excluded from the Working Income Tax Benefit, even though hundreds of thousands of students have to work full-time to afford their tuition fees and lower their eventual student debt.

“There is no plan for student debt, no plan to ensure that the expiring Millennium Scholarship funding remains in the system as needs-based student grants, and no plan to make education more affordable for low- and middle-income families,” said Savoie.

Finally, Savoie pointed to the omission of adult literacy funding in the budget, except for plans to download that responsibility fully to the provinces.

“Adult literacy funding was inadequate under the Liberals, and it is being gutted by the Conservatives,” said Savoie. “If we want an equitable and competitive economy, we need federal leadership on literacy, not abandonment.”

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I will post my thoughts on this later, just sharing this press release for now.

The cost of tuition will be tied to the rate of inflation starting in the fall of 2007, according to Alberta’s advanced education minister. This is a long-awaited, but welcomed announcement.

However I do have one question regarding this announcement, which I have written to the minister about. In the article above, it states that the minister says this move could save the average university student $3800. Now, I’m in a post secondary institution, which means I know how to do some math. I do not see how he calculates a savings of $3800. My tuition is $4200 which is for a college, but I should still see around the same savings on this plan as a University student. The average cost of tuition at the University of Calgary is $5200. I would welcome a decrease of my tuition to around $400, and I’m sure a UofC student would love tuition at the rate of $1400. However I do not see how these savings can be achieved under this plan, and unless I’m missing something, I believe the minister is trying to deceive the educated. Tieing the cost of tuition to the rate of inflation will only make the increasements in the rate of tuition smaller, and tuition certainly doesn’t rise $3800 in one year. I should give the minister a chance to respond to my letter before I criticize him anymore.

Can anyone reading my blog help me find the mystery savings of $3800?

Edited To Add: Supposedly QR770 misreported. The $3800 is savings over a total of 4 years. Still a high estimate at $900/year. And still this plan is not enough to make tuition affordable, it is already unaffordable. This won’t make it easier for anyone. - http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=7992

I always get a little bit of a laugh when I read conservative-mad blogs. You know, the ones with ridiculous ideas and paranoid-crazed writers? Well today, I didn’t just laugh a little; I am literally rolling on the floor laughing out loud.

The blog that I found so hilarious can be found here. In this post, the writer indicates that his/her daughter came home from school one day and announced that they were sharing pencils at school with other classmates. Basically the teacher gathers all the pencils and places them in a box, for each student to take when needed and give back when done with it. Sounds like a smart solution to a problem. However the writer over at Officially Screwed calls it communism.

The writer asks “Am I being paranoid?” and the answer to that question is yes.

However more disturbing are the serious comments to the post on his/her blog. Here are some quotes that are emphasized by me and also a few of my own comments, to show the thoughts of some conservative bloggers.

Conservative comment: The teacher is corrupting her students with communist ideology. Obviously, the students with parents who can afford pencils deserve to get more out of their education. It’s just common sense: students who can afford pencils (and books and computers and tutors) will learn more and teachers should respect this natural advantage.

My comment: Being rich/poor is not a natural advantage. Our economy is neither natural nor fair. You neglect the poor and they will start a revolution.

Conservative comment: Of course they would take from the competent to give to the incompetent, they seem to believe in saving the weak at the expense of the strong.

My comment: Poor students are not incompetent; I was one of them at one point. You can’t even say all poor students’ parents are incompetent. The only thing that is incompetent in this situation is the economy.

Thanks to “where’d that bug go?” for letting me know about the pencil communism post.

Today at SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) was the day they counted the ballots for the student council. I got onto the council with highest vote from my department. Just thought I’d celebrate through my blog. I hope I can use this position to make life easier for students in Alberta.

It looks like B.C. courts have ruled that the charging of school fees for any materials or equipment required to finish a course leading to graduation is a violation of the B.C. School Act. You can read about it here.

I could not be anymore happier with this decision and I hope it spreads across Canada.

I use to live in B.C., and I was in a better area as our school would only charge $50 total for the entire year. $25 would be a text book deposit that would be returned once all text books were returned. The other $25 was a non refundable fee.

When I moved to Alberta, we saw ourselves with fees up to $400. Being low income, we simply could not afford it. There was a waiver system; however we needed to be an Albertan resident for a longer period of time to apply for the waiver. Also the embarrassment of having to waive the fees is enough to make parents who really need the waiver, not apply for the waiver.

Victoria has been fee-free since 1997. They’ve been running schools fine since then, from what I hear. There is no reason why any other school district can not be fee-free. It’s time we start demanding our provincial governments to change the funding formula for schools, and make sure no one is forced to pay amounts they cannot afford to attend school.