In my fourth year at Queen’s, I arrived back at school to the sights and sounds of a campus coming alive with students. A week later, I arrived at my first class to hear my professor say a particular interdisciplinary course wasn’t held that year because it was unaffordable.
Following the class, a friend complained about tutorials being biweekly. Apparently, his department had too little cash to employ a TA weekly.
At the end of the day, I was looking online for an elective class and noticed a memo at the top of a departmental website: “We are unable to offer [these courses] this year due to funding constraints.” It was clear that the strain on the University budget was severe and faculties and departments had been forced to cut back. A year later, the situation is increasingly sombre. As students, we feel these cutbacks daily in our classes and on campus.
Queen’s isn’t unique in its current financial situation. Like all common problems, this one seems to have an easy answer: tuition fee increases. The average tuition fee for an Ontario student is just under $5,000 per year, a number that has tripled in the last two decades. Certainly, Queen’s provides substantial financial aid to its students, as do provincial grants and loans. These ease the tuition burden, but not enough. Thirty-nine per cent of the revenue in the University’s operating budget, which funds core academic and administrative functions, comes from student fees. Fifty-one per cent arrives in the form of provincial funding. As long as university education is publicly funded, this heavy burden shouldn’t be ours to shoulder. Habitual tuition fee increases can’t and shouldn’t be the answer to this problem.
Given the number of major construction projects recently completed or initiated on campus, the solution to our financial woes may seem obvious. Instead of cutting back on courses, cut back on construction. Is all this building necessary? The answer is yes, especially when it comes to maintaining the accreditation of our professional programs through building upgrades. As a graduate student in an age of increased enrolments, I can easily attest that our thriving community needs more lab space, office space and space to breathe. Learning, both inside and outside the classroom, can only happen if adequate facilities exist.
So we shouldn’t increase tuition, and we shouldn’t cut our capital projects. Nonetheless, the current university system cannot survive under these pressures. Financial constraints and lack of infrastructure have produced an establishment in desperate need of repair and reform. Queen’s students may cheer loudly during orientation week or claim it has an exemplary broader learning environment, but the major goal of any post-secondary institution should be excellence in academic teaching and learning. I believe this excellence is at risk at Queen’s. As students, we need to take our education into our own hands. We’re entering a major period of change, precipitated both by a financial crisis and, perhaps, by the slow realization that Queen’s has some catching up to do when it comes to offering cutting-edge, engaging academic programs. It’s possible the University will emerge as a more robust and successful institution somewhere along this trajectory of change. In the meantime, however, it is clear that the picture is grim.
Both graduate and undergraduate students belong to lobby organizations that advance our goals at the Ontario legislature and beyond. Most students can’t even name those organizations. As students, it’s our right to demand a quality education; it’s also our responsibility to advocate for one. Externally, we should be participating in or debating the campaigns of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) and the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). OUSA is the lobby organization affiliated with the AMS. Members of the SGPS belong to CFS. At the very least, we should recognize the advantages and limitations of belonging to these federal advocacy groups. We should understand and engage with the system-wide and Queen’s-specific issues that threaten the quality of our education, and we should inform ourselves so as to challenge decisions that will negatively impact our education and support decisions that improve it.
Most importantly, we should be engaging in action and dialogue that lead to productive alliances and new communities on campus.
Departmental student councils should work with graduate associations to share ideas and establish common goals and priorities. The work of students in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies to raise awareness about the Arts and Science academic planning process is one example of this kind of dialogue. The community of faculty and students working together to campaign for rooftop solar panels as an economic and an environmental step forward is another.
Speaking out and taking action on our education is crucial in this moment at Queen’s. As students, we are the ones with the most to lose in this situation, but also those with the most to gain. In our best classes, we learn to be aware and think critically. It’s time to use those skills to commit to the success of the campus that provides us with that opportunity to learn.
Leora Jackson, ArtSci ’09 and MA ’11, is the 31st rector of Queen’s University.
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