Saturday, May 26, 2012

Occupy Montreal

One of the back stories on Rex Murphy's program a couple of weeks ago, when he was busying himself with throwing mud at the spoiled children who are protesting their tuition increases, was about the value of a post-secondary education.

This might have made for a more interesting program than he actually had.

Post-secondary institutions (i.e. colleges and universities) are caught in a time warp.

As institutions, they no longer have a monopoly on knowledge.

While that has at some level always been the case, the internet has evolved to a place where universities are at risk of having on-line learning cut their grass.

The old canard about having those eager young minds gathered around a wise "teacher" doesn't hold much when those first year undergrads are sitting in lecture halls with 900 other students.

This ain't Socrates sitting under the olive tree.

And good for those Quebec students for making this an issue. Education is a commodity, and why should it be withheld from some and bestowed on others?

Why does there need to be "tuition"?

The Quebec students have put to shame their contemporaries around the world who have simply swallowed tuition increases.

Britain had a few protests but nothing noteworthy when their students saw their tuition more than doubled.

Let's get real. A higher education is the right of everyone bright enough to earn one, if that's what they choose.




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