Ontario’s “student choice initiative” is a classic Doug Ford 1.0 policy, introduced last January when Ford and his team still thought it was wise to take on all comers in their rush to transform pretty much every aspect of the Ontario public sector.
Politically, this is a curious policy. It doesn’t save the cash-strapped government any money and it feeds the narrative that Ford doesn’t like either students or education. He added to that perception when he said in a fundraising letter, “I think we know what kind of crazy Marxist nonsense student unions get up to.” He then claimed he had fixed it by making student union fees optional.
Student leaders predict that the new opt-out rules could deal a terrible blow to campus culture, but they need to step back and think through what opting out really means. If large numbers of students don’t support a particular service, that ought to tell the student politicians that the service is not valued. Why should students have to pay for something they don’t consider useful?
The students’ federation does raise some legitimate complaints about the student choice policy. It is administratively complex because every school has a unique mix of student-paid services. Determining what is essential and what is not is a relatively arbitrary process. A federation spokesperson rightly asks why students are being given a say on small stuff but not on the big student costs the government has protected.