Subsidized Tuition


Subsidized Tuition
In 2017 an estimated 1.7 Million people were attending university across Canada. On average one year of tuition for an undergraduate degree costs just less than 7 thousand dollars for Canadians and almost double that for international students. These numbers may not be the highest in the world but they certainly effect a lot of people’s options when it comes to deciding on a school or even if they can afford to go. Subsidized tuition would help a lot of people in choosing a future path and encourage more people to apply.
Just recently the Ontario government changed the rules on tuition and have removed free tuition for low income families, but have lowered prices as well. While this does change the options of many students it will also allow them to offer financial aid to more people. This example of course focuses solely on students from low income backgrounds but if this same thought process was put in place for all students it would bring the cost down. If instead of offering free tuition it was subsidized and all students at one school were to pay the same base amount every semester it would take some of the strain off, yes it would still cost a fair amount of money per person but it would be much more reasonable than a lot of tuitions currently.
One of the downsides to free tuition is that the waitlist for being accepted into a program would be very long. Lowering the chances of getting in, and becoming very competitive. This can be seen in the German education system as the waitlist for certain programs is many years before they will even consider an application. By having that smaller fee, it would open more doors for a lot of people as well as keeping the waitlists shorter and more reasonable.     
 It is also important to have at least some sort of fee is the attitude that being handed a full ride can bring. With Free tuition there could be an attitude of not caring about classes because there will always be another one. The sense of responsibility would lower and there would be a higher percentage of students who would skip class, whereas with subsidized there is still that sense of ownership over one's education and that need to be a good student and put the time in instead of wasting the opportunities given. Having a post-secondary degree means something to employers and the determination shown by students to obtain one demonstrates a lot of character.
While there is no perfect solution, subsidized would at least take some pressures off students but keep the respect that one has for their schooling.

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