Government cut-backs

high school youth unemployment and cutbacks in government funding for post-secondary study ar the new realities confronting students. The implications for most working and eye class students are either to abandon fostering altogether and to accept a future of McJobs and unemployment, or to be saddled with a lifetime of debt.Since the halt of WW II, science and technology remove been playing a dramatic completelyy increased employment in the dish 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, in the midst of 1971 and 1986, jobs primarily concerned with the creation and utilization of entropy and technical knowledge have represented two- tierces of electronic network job growth.This has led to a rapid amplification in school enrolment. Between 1951 and 1993, the number of regular post-secondary students has increased over tenfold, growing from 91,000 to almost 1 million.Howe ver, accompanying the scientific and technological revolution, is a horrible growth in productivity that has led to high levels of unemployment. Between 1980 and 1993, youth unemployment increased from 12% to 17.5, go away many with no other alternative notwithstanding to remain in or re felon to school.Since 1984-85, tuition tip off fees have more than than doubled across Canada, get-up-and-go more students into the labour market in hunting of income. While in 1980, 31% of full-time students, ripened 15-24, held jobs during the school year by 1989, this number had reached 41%. This worsening economical situation has also sternly interfered with the studies of college and university full-time students, as almost a third of them were forced to work 20 or more hours per week during the school year.Another reflection of the economic hardship of students is their growing debt burden. In 1984, 114,000 Ontario students received most $4000 million in student aid, by 1993-94, a s tuition continued to increase, about 180,000 students (representing almost single-half of full-time students) took out over $1 zillion in loans. The average value of loans in 1994-95 was almost $6800.By 1998, the federal government is scheduled to legislate a total of $7 billion in transfer payments to the provinces for medicare, amicable assistance, and post-secondary education. The expected effect on Ontario university students is a doubling of their tuition.But this is all the eyeshade of the iceberg. Ontarios education minister, John Snobelen, has already made unfastened his governments intention to move toward a market-based tuition fee. If both levels of government abandon their financial countenance for Ontario universities, tuition will reach minimum levels of $7500-$8000.To sideboard the danger of a dramatic growth in defaults as it increases tuition fees, the federal government has transferred indebtedness for student loans to the private banks. While increasin g the role of the private banks in the short term, these changes set the step for the full privatization of the student loan system. Another plan, presently under discussion, proposes collecting the loan repayments through the taxation system, i.e., Revenue Canada, through an Income Contingent Loan repayment Plan (ICLRP). If the direction of government reforms is not reversed, it is only a matter of time earlier students who are at a high risk of unemployment (disproportionately women) or who are expected to have a broken income after graduation (again disproportionately women) are refused access code to loans, while most of the rest are overburdened with a lifetime of debt.But the class personality of the privatization process has already become apparent. For 1995-96, the demand for first-class honours degree-year places is down by 5% in Ontario20% in some facultiesleading many schools to turn toward recruiting drives and to lowering their admission requirements. Evidently , higher(prenominal) tuition is an parapet for better qualified, poorer students, while offering an opening to little qualified, richer students.Cut the deficit by taxing the heavy(p) corporationsBy focusing aid on use of goods and services reduction, the big corporations and the advanced-wing aim to deflect attention from the cause of the national debt the decreasing 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 embodied tax rates in the industrialized world. Even the same 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 spending scheduled by the federal government.The ongoing cutbacks to education follow more than a decennary of political and financial pressures promoted by federal and tike governments in relation to social spending in general. Indeed, the education cris is cannot be separated 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 agenda to chassis tolerant coalitions of youth and students, workers, women, seniors, environmentalists, peace groups, farmers, aboriginal people, immigrants, and many othersin support of a genuine Peoples Alternative curriculum. This program would provide for decent wages, stronger mankind health and infant cares systems, job creation programs, while restoring and increasing public funding for education.Reversing the current cut-backs and building the peoples alternative look on escalating the student protests. As a first step, we must build strong grassroots organizations on campuses which can ensure wide student conflict in the mobilizations. Students and working people have fought a long battle to win the right to higher education, health care, UI, and 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, accessible education.