There's this philosophy in the post-secondary education sector that I refer to as "high-cost, high-aid" (called Americanization by those who really hate it). The philosophy goes that low tuition (which is what most student idealogues want) is not the best thing for students. Low tuition, according to many on the other side, allows more lower and middle-income people to go to school. But, when you have low tuition you basically allowing a rich student to get an education and become more rich, all at a pretty cheap price.

Now, if we have high tuition institutions can milk those rich kids for all their worth. You take that money and give it to poorer students in the form of financial aid. Sort of like a neoconservative socialism. That way the institution is adequately funded and lower-income students are not paying a lot of money, even if the tution price-tag is higher. This is why, despite the high tuition amounts that pop in your head when you think of US colleges, American students actually pay less for PSE than us canucks.

Now, there are a number of arguments against this philosophy including the high sdministrative costs of aid, sticker-shock, etc. Nevertheless Canadian institutions have seized this argument as their golden defence of driving up tuition across the country. They even use it in defence of that ultimate bogey-man, differential tuition. Don't worry, we'll take care of financial aid, they say, this won't be a system for the rich.

Now, here's the problem: Despite what they say, no Canadian schools seem to be actually getting around to putting that money into financial aid. Sure, they're milking the rich (along with everyone else) but the money is disappearing into the institution. You see in the US there are schools that actually do improve aid, like the University of Virginia. Canadian schools seem to just like talking about it.

So maybe we in the student movement need to move beyond simply calling for regulated tuition. Maybe we need to make sure that if our schools want to Americanize they either go big or go home. If they're not willing to pony up some cash for financial aid then they should shut up talking about it.