After the Quebec provincial government launched a website giving students the rationale behind a looming tuition hike, some student groups fired back by creating a copycat website that responded to the government’s reasons.
The government’s website tries to convince students that the tuition increases set to kick in next year are much needed and fair.
Tuition fees in Quebec will increase by $325 every year until 2016, according to the 2011-12 provincial budget.
“[The tuition increase] aims to ensure the quality of teaching and research and contribute to maintaining the value of a university degree,” the website reads.
Some of the $265 million that comes from the increased tuition fees will also go towards intensifying research, according to the website.
Currently, undergraduate students in Quebec pay about $2,168 per year in tuition fees. When the tuition increases cap off at $3,793, they will still be lower than the weighted Canadian average of $5,535, the website stated.
A group of students were quick to respond with a website of their own, laid out almost identically as the government’s.
The anti-tuition hike website argues that the increase will lead to more student debt and drop outs.
“The $1,625 tuition increase has nothing to do with the quality of teaching or the value of a university degree,” the website reads. “In fact, this fee hike (the largest in Quebec’s history) will force students to take on more debt, second jobs, or even drop out of school.”
Laurent Bastien Corbeil, a second-year political science student at McGill University, said he agrees with the website’s creators.
“I don’t think anyone should be in debt to get a degree, especially one in political science,” Corbeil said.
“Right now it seems to me that the government hasn't done anything to find alternative solutions,” Corbeil said. “There's plenty of ways the government could raise revenues. The first reaction shouldn't be to make students pay more.”
Corbeil said he thinks the copycat website was a good idea.
“You can just see how childish this government is by the way it reacts,” Corbeil said. “They actually paid money to have their ridiculous website come out on top of any search result associated with the tuition hike in Google. They can try to justify these hikes in any way they want — no one is buying their argument.”
According to the government’s version of the website, social science students are paying $2,000 at Montreal, $5,000 at Queen’s, $6,000 at Dalhousie and over $8,000 at University of California.
The student’s website, on the other hand, points to France where students don’t pay any tuition and Germany where they pay $1,500 at most.
As for the overall protest against the tuition hike, Corbeil said: “We're students. We're not criminals, we're not the black-bloc, we're harmless.”