by Kaan Ocbe / Contributing Writer
How much did your tuition cost this semester? How much did it cost last semester? To those that have been paying attention, it’s common knowledge that tuition is rising. In fact, according to figures provided by the Florida Board of Governors, tuition at FIU specifically has grown by an average of 15% per year over the past five years while fees have more than doubled.
According to the Florida Board of Governors, tuition for in-state students was $117.67 per credit hour in 2010. However, FIU’s own admissions website reports that tuition is now $205.57 per credit hour. The cost of tuition and fees is one of those things that just increases every year as a rule. It’s like some kind of unfortunate law of nature that most people have resolved that you can’t fight back against.
But what happens when you fight back against it? Though the struggle of increasing educational costs is common for students all around the world, the response of American students does seem to be a bit of an anomaly compared to some of their international peers. American students seem to have accepted many of their more unfavorable conditions as unchangeable.
This mentality is different from university students in Montreal, for example, who went on strike for the better part of 2012 in response to the government of Quebec instituting a five year tuition increase. That was an eighty percent increase in tuition which, by the way, would have still left students in Montreal with the lowest tuition in all of Canada. The students weren’t having it, and the strike eventually swelled to 150,000 students strong while demonstrations soon spread to other sections of society in Montreal. In September of 2012, the government of Quebec backed down and froze tuition right where it was.
Here we are back in the states and every year without fail, as sure as the sun rises, so does tuition and fees. What’s the difference between here and Montreal? Why are they so adamant about keeping their educational costs low while students in the United States seem so passive about them increasing, slowly tightening the chains of our collective debt loads around our throats?
One major difference is that Montreal is a place with a long history of student activism and organization and the other major difference is that in Montreal, students are organized. Students in Montreal long ago formed student unions so that they could collectively fight for their interests as students. This has helped to keep tuition low, as well as given the students in Montreal an avenue to voice their concerns and to tackle the problems that face them as students.
The students in Montreal were not alone either, international solidarity poured in from around the world as we all watched young people draw a line in the sand. Montreal was not an isolated incident either, student demonstrations seized the UK in 2010 when the Tory government moved to increase school fees and from 2011-2013 Chilean students fought for a liberatory education with a movement that became so powerful that one of their leaders became a member of parliament.
Students and their parents alike have been looking for a solution to come from on high to solve this impending crisis. Demanding change from politicians is of course necessary to remedying this odious situation but if we rely on that avenue alone then we as students are abdicating our responsibilities to ourselves. In addition to seeking change through political avenues, students must also contest the creation of this debt on the ground, at the point of consumption, in the very tuition and fees that we are paying in the first place.
We can do this through the formation of a student union. What we’ve learned from the unceasing climbing of the cost of our education is that school administrations and the state governments that employ them will not reduce costs on their own without some pushback from students. Student governments can’t always serve as a voice for our concerns.
When FIU’s Board of Trustees approved an increase in tuition and fees in 2010, our former SGA president told FIU News that “in order to get a quality education, more class offerings and enhanced academic advising, we must support this increase.” By forming an autonomous student union, the students can organize and negotiate for their interests, much like a labor union does at a workplace.
A university system only functions because of its students. Students provide the very justification for the existence of these universities, we justify the salaries of the bloated university administrations, and we keep the place running with our labor, payment and the collective mortgaging of our futures. Yet we have no input in our education, much less any influence on the cost and are treated as passive consumers who will accept whatever we are told.
Is that ok? Can you live with that? Perhaps I should ask again when the next tuition bill comes in.
[Image from Flickr]