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Copyright
In support of Tuesday\’s launch of a province-wide campaign to highlight rising debt loads among students, the Okanagan College Students\’ Union in Penticton could have easily borrowed the lyrics from a popular \’80s song by the heavy metal band, Twisted Sister to emphasize their point:
\"We\’re not gonna take it, anymore!\"
Dubbed \"Education Should not be a Debt Sentence\", the campaign highlights B.C.\’s record-high student debt and aims to mobilize students to pressure the provincial government to reduce tuition fees, restore per-student funding for universities and colleges, re-establish a provincial student grants program and eliminate interest on B.C. student loans.
Cory Nelmes, campus chair for Penticton\’s Okanagan College Students\’ Union, was standing among mock headstones planted in the lawn in front of the Sunoka Building as she talked about the solidarity movement which began the same day Statistics Canada released its annual tuition fee survey.
\"We have created a graveyard of debt to represent the debt of different students that attend Okanagan College,\" she said. \"The debt they are either already in or anticipating by the end of their program.\"
Nelmes noted that after having the best student grant program in the country about six years ago, B.C. now has the worst. Per capita, students receive the lowest amount of funding in Canada and interest rates on student loans are prime plus 2.5 per cent. The average student loan debt for B.C. students is $28,000 before interest.
\"Newfoundland has just recently abolished interest rates on their student loans so we\’re calling for the B.C. government to follow suit,\" she said. \"Tuition has seen an extreme increase since 2001 and we\’re calling to have the levels put back to 2001.\"
Dollar values on the headstones show amounts such as $4,000 to $40,000 and up to a whopping figure of $350,000 for one student who has aspirations of becoming a brain surgeon specialist.
Although the government has trumpeted the virtue of getting a post-secondary education, the value of that schooling means many students, some of which have families, will be facing the reality of paying back five-figure amounts after graduation. It offers little comfort to many including Nelmes.
\"Debt aversion is the largest factor in keeping people away,\" said Nelmes. \"Lower and middle income students aren\’t coming to school because they don\’t want to pay back the debt. They can\’t afford all of it. I personally don\’t how I will pay my debt back.\"
That\’s also the case for Doris Conkey, a single mother of two who has been attending OK College in Kelowna and Penticton for the past four years with the goal of getting her nursing degree.
Conkey estimates that she\’s accumulated about $50,000 in student loan and other debts during that time and added that \"they could go higher by the time I\’m done.\"
It\’s important to speak out against rising student debts or there\’ll be little hope and no relief in sight for students in this generation or the next, she said.
\"It does make it tough because they raise them every year,\" said Conkey. \"It makes you wonder if you\’re ever going to be able to pay it off.\"
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