We have seen over the past year  in Quebec that the issue of university tuition can be incredibly polarizing. Indeed, in much of the debate over the recent planned tuition hikes, anti-hike activists drew ominous comparisons not only with the higher rates in the rest of Canada, but with the comparatively astronomical sticker prices in the United States. The average cost (tuition and fees) of attending an American four-year private university is $27,293, with ancillary fees adding almost another $10,000.

While private American universities certainly represent the highest end of the tuition spectrum, universities overall in the United States are expensive compared to other developed nations. However, it bears noting that the astronomical figures often quoted in the public debate can be misleading; unlike in Canada, the sticker price of tuition is not paid by most students in the U.S. Indeed, while the list price has risen well past the rate of inflation nationwide, the average actual price paid by students—across all types of universities—has actually stayed steady over the past 10 years, growing from $12,650 in 2001-2002 to $12,950 this past year.

However the discrepancy between this supposed sticker price and the actual price paid by students by no means signifies that the American university system is working. Rather, the extremely inefficient scaling of tuition is merely a manifestation of the system’s dysfunction. This price discrimination is examined under the Bennett Hypothesis, named after the Reagan-era Education Secretary William Bennett.

Emerging in the late ‘80s, the Bennett Hypothesis posits that increases in federal aid are far from making college more affordable. Instead of increasing accessibility by making more aid available to those who need it, increases in aid actually drive up the cost of tuition. Universities have raised their tuitions beyond the rate of inflation, confident that federal aid would cushion the increase.

While the theory has since been controversial and is supported by inconclusive empirical evidence, studies have demonstrated that increases in tuition are not simply redistributive from richer students. At least at the top end of American universities—highly ranked private institutions—increases in federal student aid have been met with increases in tuition totalling more than just the amount of additional federal aid.

Another explanation for skyrocketing university tuitions is the dogged competition for students that universities engage in, year after year, for the highest scoring applicants. This competitive pressure is not misplaced in the realm of education. However, consumers—parents and prospective students—choose universities based on the very definition of imperfect information. University ranking systems, including the oft-quoted U.S. News and World Report ranking, contribute to this. U.S. News tends to take into account input statistics like entering SAT scores and spending per student, in addition to the rather nebulous concept of ‘prestige,’ which counts for anywhere from 22 to 25 per cent of an institution’s score. This is all instead of looking at what happens to students after their four-year stay at these institutions.

[pullquote]The complexity of the issue makes addressing the cost of a university education…an issue far too complex to receive serious treatment.[/pullquote]

This would not be so bad if universities did not have an incentive to blatantly game this sort of system. Many institutions, looking to vault their way upwards in the rankings, but without  having any Ivy “prestige” to trade on, have begun an arms race to attract the supposed ‘best and brightest,’ with fancy dorms, nicer buildings, and sports like squash. This behaviour is rewarded in several ways. Firstly, as earlier noted, the U.S. News rankings take into account selectivity, which means that convincing more students with higher SAT scores to even fill out an application to the university raises one’s ranking. Nicer buildings and dorms mean that you’re spending more money per student. Another notch upwards in the rankings.

This extravagant spending puts the burden of higher tuition on less affluent students. Many institutions in or near the upper tier today seem to have made this transition: George Washington University, Boston University, and New York University have all, over the course of a decade,  put themselves in the same conversation as the Ivy League and other established elite institutions, largely on the back of this tuition-fueled push.

A number of international think tanks have proposed solutions. A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) earlier this year suggested income-contingent loans as a solution to ensure access, advocating for moderate tuition levels in combination with means-tested grants. At the same time, a paper by the American Enterprise Institute suggested seriously rethinking the cost structure at American instructions—reducing the amount of tuition-funded research, downsizing under-enrolled departments, and trimming administrative bloat.

Perhaps the biggest problem facing American universities today is that this analysis provides only a snapshot of the forces pushing tuition up at the high end. Gone unmentioned are the inflated cost structures of American universities at every level, and the effects of student debt at the back end. It is undoubtedly complex and multifaceted. On some level, the complexity of the issue makes addressing the cost of a university education—beyond small-bore campaign sloganeering about interest rates on a small number of government student loans—an issue far too complex to receive serious treatment from American politicians. If anything, that should be the cause for real worry.

In his recent article, “Moral superiority and student politics,” Abraham Moussako argues that students have no duty to participate in campus politics. I’d like to refute that idea by arguing that judgements about the duty to participate are necessarily made in reference to particular facts about a particular issue.  In other words, we can’t make blanket statements about the moral status of political participation.

To illustrate this point, let me offer the following two examples:

Imagine that the administration decided to stop admitting women, non-whites, and handicapped people to the university, citing the reason behind this policy as the (supposedly) inferior mental capacities of these groups.  Obviously, the campus would be in an uproar, and I think even Mr. Moussako would agree that we all would have a duty to rally in support of our friends and colleagues.

Conversely, imagine that McGill decided to increase Heather Munroe-Blum’s salary by one penny.  In this case, I think even the scariest of McGill’s radicals would probably not even bat an eyelash.

What I’m trying to get across by these two examples is that you need to take into account the particulars of the issue when you make judgements about the necessity of getting involved.  In his article, Mr. Moussako does make a slight concession to this idea: he says while some issues are too insignificant to get worked up about, others do have relatively important consequences.  However, he also says we need not worry about these other, significant issues because they are “complex, morally ambiguous matters of economics and politics.”

Frankly, I’m puzzled by the idea here that we can ignore a duty we find difficult to fulfill.  To be sure, many of these issues require a lot of thought in order to wrap your head around them.  However, if they’re important enough, I think we’re still obligated to take a stance on them.  As Mr. Moussako emphasizes, it need not be one stance in particular.  However, it should at least be one informed by careful thought, and maybe even a conversation with someone you disagree with.

As a known student radical and victim of police brutality, I find Abraham Moussako’s Guest Column (“Moral superiority and student politics”) generally callous and presumptuous. In particular (and more relevant to my critique), I found the text personally offensive.

In his recent opinion piece, he looks down upon the complex dynamic structure of our highly politicized campus, and offers a theoretical account so divorced from reality that it could only have been published in the McGill Tribune.

If pressed to do a genuine analysis of his major argument, it would go something like this: Moussako attempts to understand the conflicts on campus that appear to disrupt the naturally peaceful social structure of campus. He projects the cause of this on the invasive “campus radicals” who he then accuses of participating in what he calls a “stark, good vs. evil viewpoint that would make Rumsfeld and company proud.”

I can’t imagine what made Moussako write that. Rumsfeld famously ignored the unknown knowns (the subconsciousness) in his speech about the known knowns. He also lied about WMDs in Iraq, and is an international war criminal. The connection seems tenuous to me. Maybe Moussako hasn’t interrogated his hidden assumptions, or actually investigated what drives the people he lambasts.

His division between “the university” and “the world” is arbitrary at best. It is hard to understand why we should view campus politics as separate from the politics of the world at large. The concern here is about people’s engagement in important social and political issues, both locally and globally. Campus is only part of where you can draw that out.

Assuming this premise is not wrought with unreflexive irony, we still look beneath to find that the target of his criticism is actually a straw man of the radical left campus political scene. He postulates that the goal of their presence on campus is to try to get others also involved in campus politics—like some industry bent on growth.

Finally, I want to explicitly assess Moussako’s claim that “there is no moral virtue to campus politics.” I will offer a short list of facts on which I find would be an ethical abomination not to take a moral stance. If you subscribe to Moussako’s false dualism, then maybe no point on the list could be considered to be relevant to the university; but I will leave all this for the reader to decide:

First, Professor Gregory Mikkelson was beaten with a nightstick and pepper sprayed in the face by the riot squad while on his way to retrieve his daughter from the nursery on Nov. 10th, 2011.

Next, A CEGEP student named Francis Grenier was playing the harmonica just across the street from the Schulich School of Music on Mar. 7th, 2012, when a flashbang grenade thrown by the police obliterated his eye.

Finally, police kicked my [expletive removed] and smashed my arm in April—which required multiple surgeries to set. If I said I was scrapping with the Pigs at the time, I would be lying. I was hit from behind, and then kicked repeatedly when I was down.

I am not preaching of any logical relations that these situations necessarily show, but a sympathetic reader should continue reading. If your heartstrings were pulled a little by any of this, even better. For everyone left over, I’m not really sure what I can do for you.

Even if you stand ideologically opposed to those who fought in the 2012 Quebec student strike, you should respect that they struggled and suffered for our tuition refund, rather than cling to a $254 cheque from the armchair of analytic certainty.

Ultimately, Moussako attempted to make a “politically neutral” analysis, not realizing that he can only do so by never acknowledging the sacrifice of his dissenting colleagues—many of whom were pepper sprayed and risked being beaten by standing firm in protests. Why did they risk it again just to picket a few classes and talk to you about tuition hikes? These dedicated people went back to the streets when strike vote results sided with the status quo. On the side of the police and the tear gas.

If Moussako’s goal was to side with power, then he succeeded. By examining “campus radicals” through his own preconceived notions, he doesn’t seriously consider what the actual concerns are for these people. Instead, he trivializes the struggles and experiences of those who confronted real violence trying to have their voice heard.

I write this fully admitting that I am a bit of a nerd: I grew up listening to the radio. Mostly I enjoyed the National Public Radio (NPR) in the States, but at the ripe old age of five,   I also happily proclaimed to my dad that our local Oldies station was my favourite. That was the ‘90s. Yet in the age of iPods, YouTube and torrents, I still listen to the radio.

In the past few years, studies conducted in Europe have revealed that radio listenership has actually increased over the past 30 years. According to one study, conducted by the United Kingdom’s Radio Advertising Bureau, listening to the radio might actually make people happier than watching TV or surfing the web. This may be because the voice on the radio provides a sense of companionship, and listeners can still be productive and do other things while they listen.

Beyond companionship, however, the popularity of radio is on the rise because programmers filter content in an age in which anyone can have their very own studio at home, thanks to Garageband. This is a facet of radio that is more valuable than ever before. In 2008 alone, over 105,000 full-length records were produced in the United States, compared with one-quarter of that in the early 2000s, according to Neilsen Soundscan. Sure, there is Pitchfork and other music reviews, but wading through them is time consuming, overwhelming, and, quite frankly, mostly pretentious dribble. Why not let the radio DJ—your new music critic friend!—play you a selection of only the best and most interesting tunes, allowing you, in turn, to decide what you like?

Other forms of media, such as social networking and blogging, complement and enhance radio, rather than replace it. Beyond simply calling in to hear a request, listeners can interact with programmers on their Facebook or Twitter pages in real-time.

Although geographically separated, many listeners can communicate at once. For example, CKUT, McGill’s campus-community station, has a “Clip of the Week” feature on the main page of its website, which enhances the listening experience by highlighting segments of a show you might not normally listen to. CKUT’s Campus Mixtapes (campusmixtapes.org) allows CKUT DJs and McGill students to curate digital mixtapes, which can be in turn, shared on Facebook.

Online archives mean you can always go back and hear a show later, no matter where you are in the world. Beyond music, campus community radio stations in Canada provide a home for many different community voices to express themselves, that don’t otherwise have the opportunity. Also, by tuning into the news and culture programs, you’re likely to learn a little something about your city and your world that you might not have known before.

My love of radio inspired me to get involved with CKUT on literally the first day I arrived in Montreal. CKUT has been a media mainstay in Montreal since its founding 25 years ago, and is still relevant to campus and the greater community. I think it will continue to be for at least another 25 years.

—Carol Ellen Fraser

Full disclosure: Carol Ellen Fraser is an elected student representative to and current Chair of the CKUT Board of Directors. To learn more about CKUT,  visit their website at ckut.ca