I'm not sure I agree with this at all. Undergraduate BAs (and the students taking them) are already treated with complete and utter contempt by the universities I work in, despite their claims to the contrary. The way the system is set up now, with funding tied to enrollment, universities are cramming in as many students as they can in programs that are of very dubious merit. Saying that the government is going to pay for BAs will mean students will treat these degrees as little better than extensions of their high-school diplomas, and I don't think you'll find anyone in the educational system, certainly at the post-secondary level, who feels that students are being properly educated as is. Then you might as well go whole-hog and say, a university degree should be compulsory. And if you do that, without addressing the degradation of standards at the secondary level, then you're setting universities up for a similar fate (and I would argue they've already declined under the current system).
I have helped many students who are, essentially, functionally illiterate. I've read some of their drafts of papers, and they are writing at a grade seven level. The TAs are even worse. The incomptency and sheer ineptness of many of them, reflected in the absurd assignments I've been handed by dazed undergrads, is even more shocking. And the problem is, they all still get in and are able to thrive because universities have hired legions of academic counsellors and advisors to do the work that should have been done back when these kids were in grade nine. And so if the government carries the freight for these degrees, universities will wash their hands of these kids even further. They will concentrate their efforts (as they are already doing) on grad school, professional degree and foreign students, setting up, in effect, a two-tier system within the university system, not unlike the health care system. And I can guarantee that smaller schools, like Trent, Brock, Lakehead, etc. will probably close down. They just will not have the money to run, and places like U of T and York, which in my opinion are already over-enrolled, will have the quality of their campuses degrade even further. And students, realizing they have no stake in the place, will treat their education with even more disdain than they do now. Ask any teen if he likes high school. You will, I guarantee, get the same answer and approach to education if you transform the BA into an OSSD-plus. Our universities will rapidly become a complete joke. And such a system will, I can assure you, lead to the creation of private or semi-private institutions in much the same way there are private schools for elementary and high-school kids. So now, where you have schools that are roughly equal in many respects, under the no-pay system, expect to see the equivalents of UCC and, by definition, your worst public schools arise in the post-secondary system.
And guess what? All those MA and PhD students working as sessional instructors, with no benefits and who make less money than I do? Their lot in life will get even worse under such a scheme, because universities will not invest in them knowing they have no incentive to do so when the government is taking a large degree of autonomy out of their hands. They might as well lobby to join the OSSTF because that's essentially what they will become, extended high-school teachers, not university professors.
Programs will become homogenized, and all the caterwauling about curriculum and whatnot that happens under the primary and secondary systems will, unless the universities somehow carve out an autonomous role for themselves, happen in the post-secondary. Universities, dependent on the government for money even more than they are now, may one day fall under the sway of the Ministry of Education as demands for accountability pile up in an era of full taxpayer subsidy for tuition. And so you will hear discussions on, for example, why are we paying these kids to study the most esoteric of topics, when no one can find a plumber, or an electrician, or numerous other trades and skilled professions? You want to study the effects of globalization on transgendered rural women in Malaysia, or the semantic evolution of Bob Dylan's lyrics in relation to the Vietnam War (to quote two topics I was given at York), then you pay for them, not the rest of the population who never went to university (and 65-75% don't).
Incidentally, my bias isn't towards the humanities necessarily. Many of the business programs I'd either axe entirely, or reconfugure into some sort of co-op placement program. This constant pissing contest between schools to see who has the best MBA (More Bullshit Ahead) programme is a giant, moneymaking and marketing sham. MBAs are mostly landing pads for laid-off execs using their severance packages, or little more than glorified social clubs for already entitled. Get rid of them. Is anyone seriously going to tell me that the number of MBAs is a barometer of economic health, when the business pages of the newspapers are filled with stories of companies failing and laying people off led by MBAs padding their compensation packages? And when most economic growth is in the small business sector, where an MBA is absolutely irrelevant? Again, if you want to pay for it, fine, as it is unregulated. But again, if universities have *no* incentive to help undergrads, these programs will get even *more* money and attention, as college sports do the US, to the detriment of everyone else. They will become even more of a sugar daddy to universities then they already are. And if you think professional programs are too expensive now.....
So I'm worried about the bias towards universities here. I really do not see the point in churning out thousands upon thousands of kids studying vague, questionable cost-free humanities and social science degrees when there is a crying need for skilled tradesmen and specialized, trained personnel in any profession you can think of. The only place most of these kids end up in is in the service industry, with everyone from the manager to the sous-chefs to the bussers to the stock guys all having their BAs, as most grad schools are out of reach for them, so I don't see why we can't give them an option to choose something else. I would be much more comfortable paying for the full tuition of someone training to be a mechanic, or plumber, or locomotive engineer or anaesthetist than someone studying poetry or sculpture. Am I placing more value on one over the other? Not really. I'm just saying in a world of limited resources, there comes a time when choices have to be made. And this is from someone benefiting under the current system, who has two social science degrees, and works in the current system. I just think the system is broken enough as it is.
So if you're asking me do I think post-secondary education is a "right", I would say no. Should it be accessible to all who are qualified? Yes. Does that mean that they should not contribute to the cost of their education in some way? No. I think fully subsidizing university BAs would be a ruinous, utter disaster. If that 's the case, then we would have to fundamentally rethink what a university is. As I said, then go all the way, and say that universities should be cumpolsory, with all that implies. Given the track record in many high-schools, I would not be optimistic in terms of maintaining quality. I am an unabashed elitist. I think universities should be able to set for themselves what they charge their students in a competitive marketplace. Yes, for those who can't afford it, establish a system of grants and bursuries to help them. But do *not*, under any circumstances, make it easier for mediocre, disinterested students to clog universities and waste their resources without contributing, in some way, to what they're getting. It's unfair, illogical, and detrimental to the system as a whole. Accessibility and quality don't have to be mutually exclusive, but by carping on about the "right" to a university education and demanding someone else pay the freight, they inevitably will be.
