Education/Consumerism

A degree in consumerism

BY Jonathan Goldsbie June 11, 2008 15:06

Tumbling out of Dundas station and into Toronto Life Square, you emerge in a food court. A video screen advertises Fashion magazine. Taking the elevator up to ground level, two animated beavers entice you to subscribe to their cellphone service. A wall of movie posters, another advertising screen, and another escalator later, you’re at the Future Shop. Up a third escalator, past a few more screens, you’re rewarded with a second food court. One last ascent, another Fashion pitch, and you’ve finally made it to Jack Astor’s. Or to your Ryerson lecture, in the movie theatre next door. Either way.

So, if you choose Ryerson for your post-secondary education, you may be required to study a lot of advertising in order to graduate, even if you aren’t majoring in marketing or design. Which some might think is a good thing. The university, at least, doesn’t have to pay anything to rent the space — unless you count student eyeballs as a form of currency. Which Toronto Life Square developer PenEquity apparently does; according to a Toronto Star article from April, about half of the building’s “entire revenue comes from ads shown on its video monitors throughout the building. That’s why its 24 AMC movie screens, 10 to be used as lecture halls by Ryerson University students during the day, are located on the top, fourth floor....”

There’s no doubt Ryerson needs the space and that government funding for universities is hard to come by. But this substitution becomes a self-propelling model: why would the government pay for something the private sector is willing to offer for “free”? That’s precisely the philosophy that has come to dominate mainstream politics in the past decade, eroding those last few spaces that are supposed to exist apart from, or in reaction to, consumerism. In the face of government cutbacks, corporations step in and make up the difference, and strings of varying lengths always come attached.

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