blogcutter

I don't usually pay much attention to these manufactured occasions like Black Friday or Cyber Monday or Giving Tuesday. And incidentally, I haven't heard a word this year about Buy Nothing Day.

Anyway, today, Giving Tuesday, with my e-mail box overflowing with beg-messages from organizations I've donated to in the past - and several more that I don't recall EVER donating to - I File-13'd the lot of them and made a donation elsewhere: the Schulich School of Music at McGill University:

https://giving.mcgill.ca/make-impact/faculties-schools-and-units/schulich-school-music

Quebec's decision to double tuition fees for out-of-province students is one that's deeply personal for me. While I've never actually lived in the province of Quebec, I did work in Gatineau for about 12 years out of my 33+ year career in the federal public service. My daughter, now in her early 40s, has been a Quebec resident since she was 18 and got all of her postsecondary education in Montreal.

Montreal used to be a wonderfully vibrant, international city. When it hosted Expo '67, it managed to construct a subway system and underground city in record time (Is there a lesson there for our beleaguered LRT?) In my late teens and early twenties, I took numerous day trips to Montreal, both to shop at their quirky boutiques and soak up the language and culture. Voyageur offered buses every hour on the hour, from 6AM to midnight, at an economical same-day-return rate. Mind you, I recall one occasion where I had to forgo the cheaper rate after spending an uncomfortable night in the Montreal bus station, the result of attending a Joni Mitchell concert that both started and finished late.

My daughter passed up scholarship opportunities at Carleton and uOttawa to attend McGill, and I think it was a good decision for her. At the time, rents in Montreal were reasonable and tuition expenses affordable. But over the years, housing and tuition expenses have gone up at a much faster rate than overall cost-of-living expenses. That's true in all provinces, of course, but when all Canadians (not to mention people from other countries) are struggling with inflation, it seems particularly egregious for Quebec to be doubling university tuition fees for anyone living outside the province, even if it's just a few metres across a bridge!

Some programmes at English-language universities will be particularly hard-hit, including music programmes at McGill, where nearly half the students come from outside Quebec:

https://epaper.nationalpost.com/article/281736979207644

Legault insists the very survival of the French language is at stake. Like, seriously? French is already one of Canada's official languages. In Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, parents clamour to get their kids into French immersion, to the point that English-only education is rapidly becoming a poor second cousin. And unilinguals who come to Quebec to enrol in an English-language institution are definitely going to want to learn French, just to participation the social life of the city. The strength of one's loins doesn't only apply to "pure laine" Quebecers!

For many of the people enrolling in English-language programmes in Quebec, English is not even their first language. It may merely be, so to speak, a lingua franca. And if they have several languages under their belt already, learning French will likely come easily.

Anyway, I'm somewhat heartened to read that not all Quebecers support Legault:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/most-quebecers-support-english-universities-alternative-to-doubling-tuition-polls/ar-AA1klvpG

My grandchildren are already citizens of Quebec and will not greatly suffer if this tuition hike goes ahead.
Still, it feels as if, Quiet Revolution notwithstanding, the province is becoming more and more parochial.

Today I read that even come September, most postsecondary institutions will be delivering their course offerings primarily or exclusively online. I think that really re-opens the whole question of the value of a university or college education. Should students be expected to pay ever-higher fees when all campus facilities and the other people who normally populate them are off limits?

Presumably there will be no on-campus picnics, wine-and-cheese receptions, marching on the quad, lounges, bookstores, clubs or athletic facilities, pubs or coffee houses or student residences. Nor will there be any access to the strictly educational stuff like libraries, archives, art galleries, sophisticated scientific lab equipment, computer facilities or other on-site tools of the trade. People with common interests will be unable to gather in person to work on shared projects or goals. There'll be no in-person tutoring or peer counselling. And no opportunities to just socialize, which is a HUGE component of the campus experience!

I haven't even mentioned travel. In my day, many a student would spend summers hitchhiking across Europe or travelling with a Eurail pass, seeing the sights, staying in youth hostels or dorms, perhaps studying at a European university for a term or working overseas for a couple of months and gaining invaluable personal enrichment and international experience in the process. Now they're confined to quarters.

What kind of student life is that? What sort of opportunities will young people have to "find themselves", spread their wings and develop into thriving, or even functional members of adult society?? And if none of the infrastructure is being maintained or opened to its intended activities and gatherings, why should the students be expected to pay for it? Assuming they could even afford to, without any opportunities for on-campus employment?

It's a rather bleak picture, isn't it?

Will high school graduates opt to just wait it out? Will they abandon the idea of postsecondary education en masse? Or will they somehow adapt, and just live out lives that are very different from those of their parents and grandparents?