Today was supposed to be final exam day in my American politics class, but no one will take the test. Instead, we have a full month of classes ahead of us, if a solution ever emerges from secret talks now being held in Quebec City.
Since I have some time on my hands, let’s try to figure out what’s going on. Is there any way out of this mess? Will there be any winners in this game, whether at the polls or in classrooms?
First, however, I have to address the obvious question that readers outside Quebec might ask: Why all the fuss? Quebec’s university tuitions are the lowest in Canada and CEGEPs are virtually tuition-free, so what are people fretting about?
In fact, at the risk of reinforcing the perceptions of mutual indifference that Michael Ignatieff maladroitly brought to the surface recently, Quebecers in general do not pay much attention to what other provinces do, particularly in education. University administrators and policy-makers might like to compare themselves to the rest of Canada but for the vast majority of Quebec students, the Quebec system is as distinct as the society it serves.
Since my own student days, when tuitions were around $500 a year, activists have been clamouring for one of the unrealized promises of the 1960s’ Quiet Revolution: higher education should be seen as a collective good for society as a whole rather than a personal investment made by individuals in search of future income gains, and therefore reformists at the time determined that the new CEGEP system should be tuition-free, and advocated that universities should also one day be tuition-free.
Starting in the late 1980s, however, Liberal governments have instated successive increases in university tuition, up to about $2,400 now. The latest series of increases under Jean Charest’s watch were grudgingly swallowed by students, but the projected $1,625 hike, albeit over five years, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Is higher education a public good or a private investment? Of course, in Quebec as elsewhere, it is a mix of the two, but the recent moves by the Charest government tipped the balance toward the latter approach in an unprecedented way, thus clashing with the well-entrenched views of large segments of the population.
This is not the only way in which Quebec’s culture of higher education differs from that of other Canadians. Over the years, the low costs of higher education have made it possible for young adults to pay their own way through university without necessarily relying on their parents’ financial assistance. This expectation of self-reliance is part of what makes Quebec’s culture of higher education distinct, and it is important to take it into account to understand the reaction of many students to the projected tuition hike.
All this being said, however, the student movement is far from united, and many student associations in areas that tend to favour a more “instrumental” view of higher education, such as economics, business or some of the professional schools, have resisted the calls for strike.
Also, the unfortunate association of radical elements prone to violence and vandalism has tarnished the movement in many of its public demonstrations, leading to a gradual erosion of support for their cause, both in the public and inside student bodies.
For example, of my department’s five student associations, one opposes the strike (the politics and economics double majors, unsurprisingly) but others hold on while condemning acts of violence or vandalism (some within our own walls). Whether support for the strike will last as the prospect of losing a semester looms closer is anyone’s guess.
Negotiations are underway to settle the issue for the time being and salvage the semester of thousands of students, mine included. But whatever is bargained for in a closed room shouldn’t be more than a temporary solution. Many students will lose the benefits of a full semester, but they might gain some experience in applied politics.
In the long run, the level of tuitions is a choice that voters should settle, but the atmosphere generated by the strike is unlikely to make decisions any easier for Quebec voters.
If anything, recent polls suggest that this season of student discontent has muddied the waters enough to make Jean Charest’s decision whether to call an election in the spring or in the fall even more of a gamble than it already was.
Pierre Martin is a professor of political science at the Université de Montréal.