University of Alberta, Dean of Law Lewis Klar

The Myth of the Free Market:
American Economy and Higher Tuition Fees at Canadian Law Schools

   
Nipawin - Monday, March 18, 2002 - by: Mario deSantis
 
 

 

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

 
 

supply
and
demand

It was just yesterday that I mentioned that our free competitive market characterized by the neoclassical equilibrium theory of the supply and demand curve is really the wrong determinant for visualizing economic policies. In making economic policies, we must not refer to the supply and demand curve, rather we must refer, among other matters, to the institutional setting determining the free competitive market place.

 

 

is this
really a
free
market

Whenever American institutional setting includes the foreign policies to wage enduring wars along with the intelligence of the CIA, and a $379 billion military budget, and some $750 billion of dirty money embedded into a $10 trillion economy, and a chronic raping from the rest of the world as America experiences a chronic foreign trade deficit in the order of $300 to $400 billion per year, and a corporate soul as identified by the Bush administration, then I ask myself if this Free Market is really a free market for all, or for the benefit of the big corrupt corporations and their fortunate sons.

 

 

90% of
Italian press
own by P.M.

The Free Market is as free as the media in Italy, 90% controlled by the richest man of Italy: a corrupt prime minister Silvio Berlusconi who while charged for fraud is slipping away from justice by condemning the judiciary for biases, by legislating laws to protect himself from being prosecuted, and by using the statute of limitations for having his charges dropped.
   

provincial
downsizing

Canada, traditionally with a different history and a different culture from the United States, is now being driven by the competitive market place as most of the provincial governments are downsizing their services.
   

social
mistake

Today I learn that the Toronto Law School is increasing tuition fees by $2,000 a year over the next five years to pay for professorial salary increases. Now, can you believe this story? The Toronto Law School predicts that its own professional salaries are going to increase. Because the Toronto Law School is making the social mistake to further privatize education, then we have all the other law schools across Canada increasing their own tuition fees because of the reasons of the Free Market.
   

tuition
based
on
expected
earnings






self
fulfilling
prophecy


Now listen to Lewis Klar, dean of the law school at the University of Alberta; he says that tuition fees should increase by $2,000 per year over the next two years because law graduates earn on the average $60,000 per year after five years of their graduation. What bothers me is that the academicians are putting students into boxes, the dentist will make on the average so much money so his/her tuition fees should be so much, the lawyer will make on the average so much money so his/her tuition fees should be that other much, and so forth.


Academicians deal with students as if they would belong to a Middle Age guild. I have a wife who is employed in nursing administration and who was told at the young age of 12, and because of the so-called intelligent tests, that she was not university material. I am happy my wife proved her teachers wrong! This approach of predicting the future for the few and privileged is decidedly wrong. Just think about this predicted correlation: Free Market and its own Predictions.
   
References:
  Pertinent article published in Ensign
   
  Law school tuition to increase across country, Sarah Schmidt, March 16, 2002, National Post http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20020316/354001.html