When it comes to tuition increases, the Ontario government is leaning on those who can fight back the least.
Grade 12 students who will attend an Ontario university in the fall can expect to spend an extra $2,400 on average on their four-year university career. Current frosh can expect to fork out an extra $1,400, and second-years nearly $700. Third-years will pay only $221 extra.
The “tuition framework,” unveiled yesterday by Ontario’s Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities, runs until 2009. It will allow academic institutions to raise tuition on frosh by up to five per cent, and by eight per cent for frosh in professional programs such as pharmacy and engineering. Tuition for students in other years will rise by up to 4.5 per cent more each year.
The framework is part of “Reaching Higher,” the government’s higher-education plan.
“By the end of the reaching higher plan, the people of Ontario will have invested three extra dollars for every extra dollar students are being asked to invest,” Chris Bentley, minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, told student reporters in a conference call on Wednesday. As part of the same announcement, another 27,000 grants for students from low-income were also promised.
NDP education critic Rosario Marchese, though, was less sanguine.
“It’s horrible,” he said. “I have no doubt that universities will increase tuition by five per cent, because they’re desperate for money.” As an alternative, Marchese is proposing Bill 12, which would “freeze tuition until 2007, and then force all the political parties to go to the electorate with a mandate.”
Jesse Greener, of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), dismissed the tuition framework’s expanded grant program, arguing that the tuition increases will completely wipe out the additional assistance.
“I think it’s a terrible day for students. We’re being hung out to dry with very high tuition fee increases,” he said. The CFS is organizing a rally today outside the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities at 900 Bay St. to protest the plan.
University president David Naylor, meanwhile, had different words for the plan.
“It’s a sensible compromise, and one that we are fully prepared to work with,” he said. The actual size of the tuition increases will be set by the Governing Council, however. “The first set of proposals are going to need to be in front of the business board in a matter of a couple of weeks.”
