Thread by @LaurieAdkin

Did the UCP ask Albertans if they wanted their post-secondary education institutions (PSEIs), built up over decades with public funding, to be privatized? I, for one, don't remember that being on Jason Kenney's list of campaign promises. 1/n #abpse #abpoli

What does privatization mean? Well, at what point does a university education cease to be a public good and become a commodified private service? 2/n

When students pay for more than half the costs of their education individually, through tuition fees? When 70% of university budgets come from tuition fees and "entrepreneurial" endeavours (things one can charge money for)? 3/n

PSEIs have already fallen a long way from being "mostly public" (publicly funded) to being marginally public institutions. Yet where is the logic in this? 4/n

Why do we have a public consensus that education should be public from K to 12, but not for young adults? Why do we make post-secondary education contingent on individual ability to pay? 5/n

This isn't the pre-industrial era, when people were supposed to marry by age 18 and considered old by age 40. Education isn't a luxury to which only the sons of the wealthy are entitled. At least, it shouldn't be. 6/n

It is profoundly elitist for the UCP to privatize post-secondary education, making it less and less accessible to citizens of average means. That's what they are doing, by cutting public funding of PSEIs. 7/n

It's parallel to privatizing health care. You can have a fully public health care system, or one in which some services & treatments are publicly funded and others are not. Bit by bit, govts like the UCP try to pare the public system down to its bones. 8/n

In the end, only the people who can pay for them get the full range of health services and treatments available. In the end, only those who can pay for it get a post-secondary education. 8/n

Why would we want to go in this direction when we don't have to? When post-secondary education could be more efficiently and fairly provided as a universal public good--like health care? 9/n

When we are at a historical moment that calls for the reinvention of economies and energy systems? When young people need higher education to meet these challenges? 10/n

And so, I ask again, did the UCP ask Albertans if we wanted our PSEIs to be privatized? To be crippled by demands to generate revenue when this is not what they were intended to do? 11/n

Universities, colleges, and polytechnic institutes are schools. Academics study and do research; they share their knowledge through teaching and publishing. Those are their jobs. Socially valuable jobs. 12/n

We don't ask high schools to generate revenue by selling products. Why would we ask universities to do so? We are not businesses; we are public services. The value we produce is everywhere, in the forms of education and knowledge. 13/n

Just like the value produced by health care providers is everywhere, in the forms of health and well-being. Sadly, some politicians don't believe that education or health care are public goods, to which all citizens should have equal access. 14/n

And so we have to defend these public goods again, and again, and again. I say, post-secondary education should be free for all who meet the academic requirements. PSEIs should have stable, predictable funding that is adequate for the demands we make of them. 15/n

PSEIs must be accountable to citizens both in the sense of accounting for how they allocate their funding, and in the sense of responding to society's changing needs and the needs of their communities. 16/n

But trying to make PSEIs function like private sector businesses--like the UCP wants to do--belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of education and scholarship as public goods in and of themselves. 17/n

The UCP's agenda is destructive of the quality of education, antithetical to independent thought and scientific endeavour, and corrosive of a pillar of democracy--informed citizens who can engage in public life. 18/n

I, for one, do not believe that Albertans want to see their post-secondary institutions degraded by privatization. Nor do they want life chances placed beyond the reach of their children, due to escalating tuition fees and debt. 19/n

And I can assure Albertans that professors feel just as passionately about protecting and multiplying opportunities for all our children--about helping them make a better world. We chose to work in the public sector because we believe in the value of what we do. 20/n

A university is not a business and should never become a business--any more than a hospital should be a business whose primary objective is to generate revenue. This would be a betrayal of the public interest. 21/n

The UCP govt does not understand why such boundaries between private interests and public interests have been put in place by societies, over time. It's time for Albertans to remind them. 22/22 #StopPSEcuts