By Michael MacDonald
York University recently went through a highly publicized strike. The tensions ran high as students worried about how it would affect their semester, and thousands of teacher’s assistants (TAs) and graduate assistants (GAs) walked along picket lines on the outskirts of campus.Meanwhile, undergraduate students - including myself – experienced an academic limbo, where some classes had resumed while many others had been suspended.Although the strike is now over, this conflict has illuminated the new model of Canadian post-secondary education.Our universities, created with a mandate to serve the public good, are starting to operate more like private businesses. I believe the strike was triggered by this new model of education moving to replace the old.York’s striking TAs and GAs are also graduate students, and their core demand is affordable education. They are asking for “tuition indexation”, best described as a guarantee that every increase in graduate school tuition will come with an equal increase in pay or funding.This is a small measure of protection for TAs and GAs, who occupy the uncomfortable role of customer and employee to York University. It is an assurance that tuition hikes will not eat away at their income. However, York University was refusing to fully guarantee tuition indexation, and as a result the strike dragged on.During the strike thousands of undergraduate students refused to attend class as many courses could not function without TAs and GAs. The courses that continued contributed to unsafe conditions along the picket lines, where long traffic delays provoked anger and violence directed towards picketers.These conditions hurt York’s reputation. In fact, the university cancelled all open house events intended for prospective students. York’s reluctance to offer tuition indexation despite the escalating costs of the strike reveal just how firmly the university will cling to the power to raise tuition.This stubborn position makes sense when we consider the changing composition of the Canadian university budget.According to a study undertaken by the Canadian Federation of Students, between 1989 and 2009 the publicly funded portion of the Canadian university budget fell from 81% to 58%.In other words, the government is investing far less in our universities. In order to adapt to these new circumstances, public universities are scrambling to find new ways to raise money, and tuition is increasing to fill the void created by declining public funds.Tuition indexation influences York’s ability to maximize “profits” through tuition, a revenue stream which the school is now dependent upon. And so, York’s reliance upon tuition is connected to our government’s diminishing commitment to post-secondary education.The origins of the York strike can be traced far beyond the chaos of the picket lines, to Queens Park and Parliament Hill.The York strike is asking us to question what a public university should look like.By fighting for tuition indexation, York TAs and GAs are resisting the new model of education which sees them as customers.On the other hand, York University is trying to push us further along the path towards the market-oriented university, which replaces public funding with rising tuition fees.Both sides of the strike want different outcomes, so which path should we choose?