Terry Project on CiTR #52 – The New Debt Politics

The University of British Columbia is moving ahead with a 10% hike to international tuition fees, and a 20% hike on student rent. Obviously, students are not happy about it. But how did we get here? This week, we go back to the 1990s—when a series of decisions radically reshaped Canadian universities, and gave us The New Debt Politics.

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Part One: New Debt Politics

Robert McGray is a professor in the Education department at Brock University. He has written about what he calls “the New Debt Politics.” The idea that personal debt is good but public debt is bad.

Part Two: UBC protests

Alex J. Mierke-Zatwarnicki is a 21-year-old political science student, a cofounder of UBC’s radical political blog—The Talon—and an activist. She tells the story of the #Iamastudent movement.

Part Three: How We Got Here

Richard Wellen is the author of the paper, “The Making of a Policy Regime: Canada’s Post Secondary Student Finance System Since 1994.” He tells the story of Canada’s tuition policy. How the Chretien and Martin government sold out poor students.

Part Four: Re-Engineering the University

Neil Guppy has worked as a sociologist at UBC since the late seventies. He takes us on a tour of campus to talk about how disciplinary politics have reshaped the university.

Check out his article: “The Canada Foundation for Innovation, Sociology of Knowledge, and the Re-engineering of the University.”