And the Total Comes To....
Written by Diana Isabel Torres Goni
@Seibouls
Illustration by Lourdes Maria Torres Goni
Walk around Halifax and go into any shop, café, or restaurant, I’ll bet you’ll find some familiar faces—maybe they’re your classmates, or you’ve seen them walking around the university hallways, heck they might even be familiar just because of the ‘student’ aura they give off. Any way you want them, they are there working late nights and early mornings, the city seems to be fueled by student power, and I guess it could be a good thing. Isn’t it great that there are so many work options for students nowadays? Isn’t it great that students are learning new transferable skills and joining the workforce even before they head on to have great careers?
Wouldn’t it be better, though, if students didn’t have to work late nights and early mornings just to make ends meet?
Pursuing higher education has become synonymous to voluntary bankruptcy— colleges and universities have become breeding grounds for student debt, sometimes forcing students into full-time jobs just to pay the few classes they can actually take with their limited time and economic resources. Keeping up with the pile of administrative fees, ever-rising tuitions, and the need to buy textbooks that never really translate into investments is hard enough for any young adult coming out of high school. Add onto it that most students are also living away from home and juggling living expenses, and your end result will be struggling students pushing their body and minds to the limit just to get by.
Achieving a university degree has become almost necessary for all career sectors and has become the setting stone of future economic stability; in order to compete, we must have a degree. So, if it’s so necessary, then why is higher education being treated as a commodity, a luxury of kinds? The economic model makes sense, with great demand, come higher prices; and although federal and provincial governments have tried to make university more accessible to students, some argue that government loans mean universities feel free to maintain or raise their tuition fees without losing ‘costumers.’
As higher-education institutions get fuller, and richer, students grapple with massive student debt and little income to plug it with. Research done in the US has shown that a significant number of students face housing and food insecurity, and while the countries’ policies may be different, the situation is not much. Here in Halifax, many of us have resigned to living under subpar conditions— mice, bedbugs, limited heating, cramped conditions, and malnutrition to name a few. Even our university has realized the severity of the problem, evident by the existence of the Community Food Room here on campus, and initiatives like Food for Fines at the Patrick Power Library. Nevertheless, what we pay in fees in a given term could feed one person for four months; but hey, at least we get ‘free’ pizza at events…right?
No, I’m not saying SMU is at fault, or that the government is, I don’t scream “death to capitalism” out the window; I’m just saying that as students we take on the debt and the unfavourable living conditions hoping that our degrees will help launch us into a career that will eventually pay off that same debt, we simply ask that you help us out by putting the damn textbook on reserve.