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A morning grab-bag of stuff on the York University strike…
- Our post from last night on the announcement that a date has been set for the contract vote.
- An article from the Globe and Mail newspaper about an anti-strike Facebook group.
- A union parody of the York University website.
- The York Federation of Students has established a strike relief fund.
- The Toronto Star is running a series of profiles of students affected by the strike.
To keep tabs on our ongoing coverage of the York strike, check out our Labor category archives, or just bookmark our main page.
The Economist looks at the changing economics of going to college, and how the financial crisis is going to change them more.
Key passage: Private borrowing for college has increased sevenfold in the last decade, and is set to rise even more. But if “a student is going to borrow, it is generally better to go through the government.” As a spokesperson for The Institute for College Access and Success puts it, private loans “really are not a form of student aid … they’re an expensive form of credit.”
The Economist‘s conclusion? “By bailing out some of the private lenders, [Treasury Secretary] Paulson risks giving the seal of government approval to a sometimes dodgy business.”
Update: When a center-right magazine like The Economist sides with students over banks, they’re going to provoke some interesting responses. Here’s my favorite screech from the comments on that piece:
The reality is too many people go to college, it lasts too long (+4 years in the US, only 3 in the UK), too many students study nonsense, and college professors teach too much nonsense. Students spend their 4-5 years taking classes in wine-tasting and astrology to round out their majors in Marxism or Interpretive Dance Theory. […] We NEED student loans to dry up because we need our terrible education system to die and be replaced by something better.
Here’s the latest on the strike at Toronto’s York University, which has largely shuttered the campus since November 6:
The striking union rejected the university’s latest offer last night, and negotiations are set to resume today. Some university community members have called on the Ontario legislature to force the strikers back to work, but the legislature is currently in recess, and will be for another month.
And here are some local resources on the strike:
A student blog that describes itself as “a neutral atmosphere for discussions about the strike.”
The website and facebook group of a group calling for binding arbitration to resolve the dispute — a position the university endorses and the union opposes.
The official websites of York University and the striking union local, and the union’s strike blog.
To keep tabs on our ongoing coverage of the York strike, check out our Labor category archives, or just bookmark our main page.
In recognition of the death of Senator Claiborne Pell, the Obama transition website change.gov is hosting a discussion of the cost of attending college.
At this writing, the thread stands at 254 posts.
For two months, a strike by Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903 has shut down Toronto’s York University.
The strike, by teaching assistants and other employees, has left the university’s 50,000 students unable to return to class, and some of them are beginning to take matters into their own hands:
- On Sunday, a group of several dozen students launched a sit-in outside the university president’s office, demanding that he hold a public forum to answer students’ questions about the strike. (The sit-in is a continuation of a four-day protest that was held before the Christmas break.)
- On Tuesday, the university’s student government presented administrators and union officials with a 4000-signature petition urging both sides to reach an agreement that addresses students’ needs.
- Today, the student government is holding a board meeting to discuss the creation of an emergency relief fund to provide financial assistance to students experiencing hardship as a result of the strike.
After weeks away from the table, university and union officials began negotiating over the weekend. Talks continue, but there has been no breakthrough so far.
January 11 Update: If you arrived at this post directly from a search, click through to (or bookmark) the blog’s main page to see all posts on this subject.
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