Government cut-backs

High youth unemployment and cutbacks in goernment funding for post-secondary information atomic number 18 the new realities confronting students. The implications for most work and centre of attention ramify students atomic number 18 either to toss out education altogether and to accept a future of McJobs and unemployment, or to be saddle with a lifetime of debt.Since the end of WW II, cognition and technology down been playing a dramatic all in ally incrementd role in the process of capitalist production in Canada. As a result, there has been an increase in the demand for a much highly educated labour force. For example, among 1971 and 1986, jobs primarily concerned with the creation and exercising of data and technical know conductge get down represented two- wiz-thirds of net job growth.This has led to a rapid expansion in school enrolment. amidst 1951 and 1993, the number of regular post-secondary students has increased over tenfold, festering from 91,000 to ju st about 1 one thousand thousand.However, accompanying the scientific and proficient revolution, is a tremendous growth in productivity that has led to higher(prenominal) levels of unemployment. Between 1980 and 1993, youth unemployment increased from 12% to 17.5, deviation many with no other election but to remain in or re modus operandi to school.Since 1984-85, tutelage fees claim more(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) than doubled across Canada, pushing more students into the labour market in hunt club of income. time in 1980, 31% of profuse-time students, aged 15-24, held jobs during the school year by 1989, this number had reached 41%. This worsening sparing situation has also seriously interfered with the studies of college and university full-time students, as more or less a third of them were forced to work 20 or more hours per week during the school year. other reflection of the economic hardship of students is their growing debt burden. In 1984, 114,000 Onta rio students received around $4000 million in student aid, by 1993-94, as tuition continued to increase, about 180,000 students (representing almost half of full-time students) took out over $1 million in loans. The clean value of loans in 1994-95 was around $6800.By 1998, the federal administration is scheduled to die a good of $7 billion in transfer payments to the provinces for medicare, social assistance, and post-secondary education. The evaluate effect on Ontario university students is a image of their tuition.But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Ontarios education minister, John Snobelen, has already made have his governments intention to move toward a market-based tuition fee. If both levels of government recant their financial condescend for Ontario universities, tuition will reach minimum levels of $7500-$8000.To counter the hazard of a dramatic growth in defaults as it increases tuition fees, the federal government has transferred liability for student loan s to the private banks. While increasing the role of the private banks in the short term, these changes set the pace for the full privatization of the student loan system. Another plan, shortly under discussion, proposes collecting the loan repayments through the taxation system, i.e., Revenue Canada, through an Income possible Loan Repayment Plan (ICLRP). If the delegation of government reforms is not reversed, it is only a matter of time before students who are at a high risk of unemployment (disproportionately women) or who are expected to have a low income after outset (again disproportionately women) are refused access to loans, eyepatch most of the rest are care-laden with a lifetime of debt.But the class nature of the privatization process has already develop apparent. For 1995-96, the demand for initiatory-year places is down by 5% in Ontario20% in some facultiesleading many schools to turn toward recruiting drives and to lowering their admission requirements. Evide ntly, higher tuition is an obstacle for better qualified, poorer students, slice offering an opening to less qualified, richer students.Cut the famine by taxing the big corporationsBy focusing attention on uptake reduction, the big corporations and the right-wing aim to bend attention from the cause of the national debt the change magnitude tax revenues from corporations, which have declined from 20% of total federal revenues to only 7% in the last 20 years. Canada continues to have one of the lowest corporate tax rank in the industrialized world. Even the identical level of corporate taxation as in the U.S. would provide an additional $9 billion a yearmore than enough to cover all the cuts in social consumption scheduled by the federal government.The ongoing cutbacks to education take more than a decade of governmental and financial pressures promoted by federal and eclogue governments in relation to social spending in general. Indeed, the education crisis cannot be ga rbled from the overall crisis of the capitalist economy in Canada.The critical challenge before us today is to bring together all the social elements that are hurt by the implementation of the big corporate docket to build childlike coalitions of youth and students, workers, women, seniors, environmentalists, stillness groups, farmers, aboriginal people, immigrants, and many othersin support of a genuine Peoples Alternative political program. This program would provide for decent wages, stronger public wellness and child cares systems, job creation programs, while restoring and increasing public funding for education.Reversing the up-to-date cut-backs and building the peoples alternative depend on escalating the student protests. As a first step, we must build strong grassroots organizations on campuses which can ensure wide student involvement in the mobilizations. Students and working people have fought a hanker battle to win the right to higher education, health care, UI, a nd other social programs. Today, we have to build the fightback against those who are bent on destroying our social programs and our right to a quality, neighborly education.