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Are Robarts Library Fees an Unfair Financial Burden on Graduate Students?
The public should have access to publicly funded institutions. It's a novel idea, I know.
Too bad the University of Toronto is slow on the uptake. Instead of expanding who can use the third largest academic library in North America, the university went and shrunk the pool.
UofT just extended the $200 yearly fee it charges the public to graduate students from other universities who want to directly borrow materials from Robarts. This flies in the face of an understanding between Canadian universities that, for the sake of research excellence, they allow graduate students to access all university libraries. Robarts in particular has an extensive and rare collection of resources.
Cheryl Misak, the University of Toronto's provost, says the current "unhappy budget situation" with a deficit in the millions prompted the fee, but that the university was already talking about different ways to increase revenue for Robarts.
I'm not the only miffed grad. Student unions and graduate departments from various universities wrote letters of disapproval to UofT and are planning collective actions against the move in the coming weeks.
Ryerson Student Union president Jermaine Bagnall says the $200 fee locks out many graduate students from a publicly-funded resource. He says it's an unfair burden on students already facing rising tuition fees and deflating grants.
Misak also brought up the issue of fairness when defending the fees. Misak says Robarts isn't unusual from other libraries in getting public dollars for capital funding. But she says acquisition funds come from student tuition fees and only involve public dollars in so far as each student head garners some government money. They don't get extra funds to buy books for external borrowers.
"We really have our students, through their fees, subsidizing the students and faculty of other universities... and that's not the most fair or sustainable way of maintaining this great resource," says Misak.
I can also argue I'm subsidizing UofT and their students' education by helping pay for the university's infrastructure. Shouldn't we have access to books if we help pay for the building they're housed in? Just last year the Ontario government announced a $15 million contribution to help upgrade the brutalist structure on St. George Street.
Misak mentioned that Ryerson University decided to pay the $200 fee on behalf of their students, based on the number of those who directly borrowed from Robarts last year. I asked how much extra money this brings in. With only 400 Ryerson direct borrowers, that totals $80,000 for the library.
Nathan Cecckin is a second year PhD history student who uses Robarts for his studies. He's also York University's Graduate Student Association president. Cecckin says the number of external borrowers isn't that large and the $200 fee is a symbolic gesture that isn't worth the controversy.
"It's not even a drop in the bucket of their several million dollar shortfall," says Cecckin
It's definitely not a big payback for making enemies out of potential allies. Both students and universities are natural comrades in fighting for increased investment in post secondary education.
UofT doesn't get this concept either. Misak says the university is also looking to implement a fee for simply visiting the stacks, but doesn't know what that will look like yet.
Photos by tianxiaozhang and hyfen
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I'm not saying this justifies this particular fee (which probably amounts to pennies in revenue for the university) but that a thousand long cuts leads to a thousand tiny seemingly inane fees should surprise no one.
I have to admit, I only know what I've read here, so I'm no expert, that's just how it appears to me until further information is presented.
Two things strike me as I have been following the media coverage of this new fee structure. One - the insistence on mentioning the $15m they got for building improvement. This money has no effect whatsoever on their acquisitions budget. Just sayin. Two: the notion that U of T receives no extra money to support external borrowers. This is BUNK. Universities are funded by the administration based on the numbers and levels of study of their students. A smaller university gets less money, and a university with more students and more grad students gets the lion's share. Which category do you reckon U of T fits into? The problem is that they have decentralized their budgets and required each faculty and department to create a cost recovery system to keep themselves in the black. A pretty crap way to run a university, if you ask me -- given that not too many of them are in the "biz" for profit, and that they are now trying to make up for some really poor investment decisions from the past.
Finally, the damage that they have done to their reputation FAR exceeds any money they will actually collect from this new policy. All this will create is more reliance on your friend's brother's cousin who goes to U of T. It's a big place -- and chances are you know someone who knows someone else with access to their collection. They'll be lucky to rake in $400K in a year. For a library with a $24m acquisitions budget, that's a drop in the bucket. All they'll be dong with that money is trying to hire more interlibrary loan staff to accommodate the massive increase in borrowing requests that could have been avoided if they would just allow people to directly borrow themselves.
And, one last thing -- they've backed off on the stack browsing pass. Geez ... thanks.
Why do we want to demonize a private institution for their policies that are put in place to help prevent larger more costly fees in the future?
There's an ongoing attempt from UofT to raise those funds, raising student fees was one of them. Well, times are quickly changing, costs are going up and in order to maintain services fees must as well.
So ridiculous to have Nathan Cecckin (a second year PhD history student) to comment on whether or not the funds have any impact. Who is he? He is neither administration, nor anyone who would have a clue what the importance of those funds are.
Glad you raised awareness, but don't make a mountain out of a mole hill. really now.
Something is certainly wrong. U of T's decision to charge part-time students full-time fees was a much more severe example of the same sort of thing.
Philosophically (or ideologically!), I think libraries should be available to anyone as I believe reading is a good thing. But I can -somewhat- accept that it takes money, they need the money, etc. It's just that it went from $0 to $200! This looks more like a 'door-man policy' to me (try to keep people out) since, as others have mentioned, the money collected isn't that much relative to their budget.
If it were really about being fair with the need to raise money, they would've done this gradually (like $50 this year, $100 next year, etc.). I also don't understand why they don't ask our 'home institutions' for the cash. I pay dearly for the 'priveledge' of writing my disseration even though don't (can't) use any of my university's resources. Maybe each univeristy could have a set # of UofT passes to give out to students - we'd all apply to our home insititution and they'd decide who gets one. I'm also dissapointed that none of Toronto's councillors have said anything about this, and there doesn't seem to be any oppposition from UofT's students either.
Finally, I wouldn't mind paying that much if Robarts wasn't the WORST libary I've ever visited. The stacks are completely disorganized with books on the floor, in the wrong place, or missing. And it's like this for months and months - go look at the architecture section (NA)!. Also, pages torn out of books, covered in writing or 'HighLiter,' and very unhelpful staff. After I make a list of books with call numbers, I'm usually '2 for 5' - 2 of 5 books that say they're there are actually there!
Rather than give UofT $200, I'm using that money to buy books (often used) and try to find what I need from the Public Library (please don't go on strike! please!!).
200 bucks? Whoopee.
2
Universities are public institutions so you get to go use all its shit because you're a taxpayer? Uhhh, no.
3
Go harass the alumni associations to cover the 200 bucks.
Vivian on October 13, 2009 at 10:51 AM
So ridiculous to have Nathan Cecckin (a second year PhD history student) to comment on whether or not the funds have any impact. Who is he? He is neither administration, nor anyone who would have a clue what the importance of those funds are.
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Who is he? Hmmm. Oh wait - it says it right there in the article:
"Nathan Cecckin is a second year PhD history student who uses Robarts for his studies. He's also York University's Graduate Student Association president."
He would know quite a bit about the issue since it's his job to know things about grad student issues. Student association leaders are the pit bulls who take on the administration over issues exactly like this.
Duh.
And while the fee sucks, I suspect it has more to do with increasing UofT student's access to the UofT resources than funding new acquisitions (encouraging York grad students to travel to York to use the York library rather than UofT's downtown campus, perhaps). Maintaining a library system that meets the needs of 50,000 students is a challenge without adding the needs of grad students and public researchers to the mix.
Whatever the reason, as public funding decreases, user fees increase. People need to get with the progam and tell gov't they're prepared to pay higher taxes to fund universities and the rest of our public services at a level that supports unrestricted access or live with universities, hospitals, rec centres and so on slapping user fees on everything.
My Grandfather, who is 86 this year, taught himself how to play violin and then how to build them. He has, on occasion used the resources of the UofT Faculty of Music library, but not as often as he would like, because of the cost. He's not an alumn nor are any of his friends or family and yet over a lifetime of paying taxes in Toronto, he has surely earned the right to benefit from UofT as a public and municipal institution.
UofT benefits in immeasurable ways from the community in which it is resident. The relationship between town and gown is symbiotic, yet nothing in the Provost's calculus seems to reflect this.
Charging external students and faculty fees is a punitive policy that goes against the spirit of academic collegiality and sense of public responsibility that should animate a university. U of T should be working to make its resources it more accessible, not less.
(I did my grad work at U of T, but the beauty of being in the life sciences is that most papers are available online).
I wonder how many people would this affect?
As mentioned before, I'm a grad student at another univeristy living in Toronto. I can, as you say, request a book through inter-library loans from UofT. But this means it is shipped to my home university which is over 200 kilometers away - this service is free, but it costs $200/year to go and get the books myself.
Step 1) Set-up an Online group (facebook, google etc)
Step 2) Get your friends at U of T to sign up and volunteer. contact them when you want a book/paper (or go browse with them)
Step 3) Take the book/paper to the closest xerox machine and make a copy and return the book/paper
Step 4) repeat as necessary
As I see it, you may make some new friends, bypass the fee and not have to deal with the frustration of trying to reason with the U of T admin.
http://www.theeyeopener.com/articles/4231-U-of-T-library-access-costs-Rye-70-000
What? That has nothing to do with it at all. These speculations and defences are really outrageous.
I did my undergrad at U of T and am now a grad student at York and all I will do is just put more strain on York for inter-library loans, which will also put more strain on the U of T side. Like someone mentioned, the puny amounts will just go to us using this service more.
I really hoped U of T wouldn't go through with this because of all the opposition. I hope Misak chokes on her fucking dolla bills.
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LULZ!!! I love all this speculation and defence of the fee. I hope Misak chokes on her dolla bills while I burden York and U of T with my inter-library loans.
Alena
http://grantsforeducation.info
Alena
http://grantsforeducation.info