Alberta's Post-Secondary Shame

This one hits close to home for me since I've been involved in student politics for a long time. Today Ed Stelmach announced an education plan that included such revolutionary plans as cutting interest rates on student loans to prime and continuing to have tuition hikes pegged at inflation.

So, for the record, the Tory plan is to keep doing what they've already been doing and also to do something the Alberta Liberals have wanted to do for a long long time.

This is ridiculous. In a province where we regularly bring in billion dollar surpluses to best the PCs can bring in is a promise to marginally reduce the amount of debt a student is buried in? They couldn't even vaguely mention a promise to increase the amount of non-loan student financial aid? Clearly the Tories still feel that only the rich should go to school and those that can least afford it should pay through the noses for it.

Not to mention the fact that they didn't even mention any sort of idea about increasing capacity, quality, etc. The University of Calgary alone rejected 800 qualified applications last year simply because there isn't the space. I thought we were in a "labour shortage" especially in fields like engineering, etc. So why are the Tories content to bring in labour from outside Alberta instead of training Albertans to reap the rewards of the boom?\

UPDATE: It seems that PC Party members agree with me that the plan stunk.