Ontario must freeze university tuition fees

from:The Windsor Star
Fri 07 Apr 2006

Over 80 per cent of Ontarians believe tuition fees are too high, even with the current freeze. More than 90 per cent of students voted to reduce tuition fees. Yet Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has announced that tuition fees will be increasing by up to 36 per cent over the next four years.

The McGuinty government promised to provide a guarantee that no student will be prevented from attending Ontario's public colleges and universities due to lack of finances.

The five-per-cent tuition increase doesn't support that guarantee.
History proves that university enrolment declined between 1993-94 and 1998-99 when a decade of tuition fee hikes, unsurpassed since 1857, hit middle- and lower-income students whose access this system is trying to guarantee.

Although the McGuinty government promises the doubling of student financial assistance, the fact is that if tuition fees rise by even five per cent each year, then for every dollar allocated to student assistance, more than $1.30 will be clawed back through tuition increases.

In effect, students are borrowing to finance their own student aid program.

Ontario should look to Manitoba, going into its eighth consecutive year of a tuition freeze, to make post-secondary education affordable and accessible. Ontario's tuition hike is just plain wrong.

So what can we do about it? Show the government that the public is really outraged. You can make a difference.

Send a fax or e-mail to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and all members of Queen's Park to let them know that abandoning their promise to freeze tuition for at least two years will cost them your vote.

Brenda McLaughlin