By Kayla Weiler, YCLer in Toronto (Dorise Nielsen club)
It has now been over a year since students have been off-campus across the country. In early March 2020, many colleges and universities made the call to move all learning to an online format in a matter of days. Students, workers, and faculty have left our classrooms empty, cafeterias closed, and library floors silent while we have all moved to online learning. Although this online format was necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not a long-term solution for our public post-secondary education system. During the shift to online learning, students have seen many of the long-ignored flaws of the post-secondary education system exposed.
To begin, many issues with accessibility have arisen due to the transition to online learning. With college and university courses being offered online, many administrators and post-secondary commentators have defended online learning as “the most accessible” format through which to deliver courses. It is argued by Canada’s biggest banks, such as RBC, that online learning will be “the future of education”. This narrative is extremely harmful, and we must be mindful in conversations about accessibility. For decades, students and workers have been fighting for truly accessible campuses with much pushback from administrators and the government. With the potential of fully-online degrees and courses, this provides administration another excuse to avoid the necessary improvements that campuses have been needing for decades, renovations such as physical access to buildings, campus sidewalks and access for mobility devices. Administrations have also made excuses for improvements to mental health and student accessibility services and have continued to avoid commitments to this work under the guise of online learning being the most accessible. Rather than focusing on making a campus that is accessible, administrators will offer underfunded online courses to students with disabilities instead of investing in material accessibility improvements to the campus. This is ableist and ignorant of the necessity of truly accessible education — accessible not just in name, but in practice.
The conversation about access to education continues with northern and rural students, where we’ve also seen arguments in favour of online learning. Many of these students have issues with accessing affordable and reliable internet access, many lack access to quiet work space, many must balance work and dependent care responsibilities — but all of these issues presently exist for students regardless of location. The unique realities for northern and rural students, however, cannot be addressed in the same way for students in southern and urban regions. There are major problems in assuming that online learning is the solution for northern and rural students to remain in their communities, when in fact the better and more long-term solution is to increase access to physical northern institutions with proper public funding, not just online learning as a shortcut. There is a way to have access to education for northern and rural students and that could include internet and online courses, but the current model of “slash the programs, move them online” is clearly not working.
In order to make online learning effective, increased investment is needed. To make online learning successful, courses need to be designed to be offered online in the first place. This requires more faculty involvement and more funding for teaching and learning initiatives. What students are experiencing now is a patchwork of learning, since the courses being offered are typically taught in person and were more often than not moved online at the last minute with little planning, guidance, or infrastructure. Successful courses, whether online or in person, require a larger number of teaching assistants with proper wages and benefits, as well as more full-time faculty. Students should also have ample access to academic support in every subject. What students have experienced with online learning thus far includes larger class sizes with fewer faculty, who themselves have been overworked and under-supported (for instance, stories of faculty having to answer emails 24/7 are very common). Students are continuing to see the privatization of campus infrastructure, including course materials, textbooks, and testing and examination software required for their finals, all of which mean additional fees on top of students’ ever-increasing tuition. This has resulted in a lower quality of education, though not at the fault of the students nor faculty — this drop in quality has to do with poor planning and support from administrators, and the increased privatization and shut-downs of public education. Students have also been paying more tuition than ever before, meanwhile having less support, less access to resources, and receiving a lower quality of education. The COVID-19 pandemic has truly busted the myth that high tuition fees result in a higher quality of education.
The way forward for post-secondary education is to recognize the long-standing problems that have been exacerbated by the pandemic and to act upon them. The issue with our current education system is that it is being used as a commodity by the capital class to produce workers that will continue to be exploited for their labour. Capitalism thrives on a system that is cheap to run, without being held accountable for quality and accessibility. The idea of a future of permanent online learning puts campus jobs in jeopardy, not only academic jobs, but also the vital trades jobs on campus and trade workers who keep students and the campus community safe. With online learning and this capitalist, increasingly-privatized structure, college and university administration will use online learning in its current format as a way to save money.
We want to have a free education system that is fully funded, universally-accessible, and public for all. We want an education system that is about access to education for the many and not for the few. We as young communists must continue to fight for a free education system that is not in the business of making money but is established for education for the working classes and that supports academic freedom. It is important that students join the fight for a free education system that is rid of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism and that is accessible and free to all. The student struggle is important in the struggle for socialism, and a way for students to get involved in this fight is through the YCL-LJC.