Last week, university students from coast to coast took a day off from classes to participate in street marches and rallies protesting what they characterize as high tuition fees and high levels of student debt, and demanding lower tuition rates and increased government funding.

My advice: suck it up and count your blessings. Canada has relatively cheap post-secondary education thanks to already massive taxpayer subsidies to the tune of about $13,000 per student annually. Average annual tuition in undergraduate programs at Canadian universities is $4,347 (StatsCan). South of the border, average tuition fees are US$10,000 for "low cost" state institutions, and $15,000 for "low cost" private institutions, with a range from about $5,000 a year for some state universities to as much as $30,000 for some private universities. Note that even the low-ball state figure is well in excess of the Canadian average.

I think I speak for most taxpayers when I say I'm not willing to pay one cent more for university subsidization. I understand the financial challenges of getting a degree these days. My daughter just graduated from university last spring. However, most provinces are struggling to keep out of deficit territory, and there are other funding priorities more pressing than lowering university tuition fees.

What is really needed is reassessment of whether the current system is adequately serving the needs of society by delivering value for the massive sums of money already being expended, particularly the notion that most everyone, regardless of ability and intelligence, is entitled to a university education.

The late William A. Henry III, in his 1994 book In Defense of Elitism, argued that our system of mass higher education "probably ought to be judged a mistake - and one based on a giant lie, that "everyone, or at least practically everyone, would be a manager or a professional."

I agree. No one with the ability to excel academically should be excluded from educational advancement due to lack of means. There should be financial support available to individuals with demonstrated exceptional potential, but it should be predicated on merit and achievement and not on entitlement.

William Henry considered the "higher education equals sure-fire career success" myth a cruel hoax perpetrated on North American youth, pointing out that at the time he wrote, there were more students in law school than positions in all U.S. law firms, and "more students majoring in journalism at any given moment than there are journalists employed at all the daily newspapers in the U.S."

In a typical year, there are some 300,000 students enrolled in college and university communications media-studies programs - far outstripping the number of jobs in the entire North American TV and radio journalism industry."

Not only does the "higher education for everyone" myth propagate false career hopes, Henry argued, it ill-serves society in general.

What we need, he said, is a forceful program for diverting larger numbers out of the academic track and into the vocational one where most future job growth will be created.

For example, reports by the Canada West Foundation, the B.C. Federation of Labour and the B.C. Business Council have warned of a skilled labour crisis. A Canadian Federation of Independent Business survey found 265,000 unfilled jobs across Canada. According to the Conference Board of Canada, this country could experience a one million worker shortage by the year 2020, and for some sectors, shortages already exist.

According to Peter Harris of Monster.ca, a recent Manpower Inc. survey indicates that Canada has one of the most acute labour shortages in the industrialized world, with only Mexico feeling the pinch more than this country.

It seems inarguable that in the nation's interest, applying any available new educational funding assistance to trades training rather than university subsidies would be appropriate.

Of course, a university education is, or at least should be, about more than employment qualification, but the practical reality is that as David Bercuson, Robert Bothwell and J.L. Granatstein argued in their work Petrified Campus, our universities have degenerated into little more than glorified high schools, and Canada's educational establishment has long since jettisoned the concept of producing an educated elite.

William Henry proposed a phased-in reduction that would roughly halve the number of high-school graduates who go on to university (from 60 per cent to 33 per cent), closing some colleges and universities, and replacing them with vocational programs and apprenticeship training. "Even ardent egalitarians should recognize the injustice of taxing people who wash dishes or mop floors for a living to pay for below-cost public higher education of the children of lawyers," he said.

Hard to dispute.