The Alberta government is allowing cash-strapped universities and colleges to apply for tuition fee increases, despite a 2006 pledge capping tuition rates to the inflation rate for 10 years.
Doug Horner, Alberta’s advanced education minister, said tuition hikes will be considered on a case-by-case basis. “I have told the post-secondary institutions that it’s our intention to maintain the cap on tuition,” he told CTV Edmonton. “We’re open to fair and equitable proposals that are brought forward.”
The University of Alberta is reportedly considering applying to the province for tuition hikes, as is the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
Increasing university revenue is provincially regulated and tied to the consumer price index. U of A was expecting a six per cent funding increase from the province. But due to a record provincial deficit of about $10 billion, the government decided to freeze funding.
U of A is struggling to cope with a $59 million budget shortfall. According to its student union, proposed hikes for professional programs could go as high as 66 per cent.
“A substantial tuition fee and professional program fee hike would discourage high school graduates from pursuing higher education, and may cause currently enrolled students to drop out of school,” said fourth-year U of A student Laura Rivera, who studies immunology and infection. But, she said, it would not deter her from applying to the faculty of medicine.
The most recent Statistics Canada data available, from 2005 to 2006, show that Alberta had the lowest university participation rate for students aged 20 to 24 in the country. At the time, only 17 per cent of Albertans in the age group attended university. By comparison, 28 per cent of Ontarians in the age group attended university.
Watson Scott Swail, president and CEO of the Educational Policy Institute, said the province should have created an education fund as a safety net when its economy was booming, instead of handing out cheques to Albertans because of the budget surplus. “When there’s less college and university access, there’s less diversity in the workforce, and society’s ability to change and evolve is limited,” Swail told the Calgary Herald.
Ian Armstrong, a third-year neuroscience student at U of A, took a more sympathetic view. “I’m not happy about the tuition hike, but I think that it’s a reasonable response to the deficit that the university is facing,” he said. “It’s not unexpected that Alberta’s economic boom would eventually end and the government would make cuts in funding to postsecondary institutions, so I’d be willing to shoulder the extra fees.”
