Alberta fees on the rise

Pete Yee

MAKING A STAND Beverly Eastham believes compulsory fees should be lower.

A recent federal report has shown that Albertan university students may have harder time balancing their budgets than students in other provinces.

The report, released by Statistics Canada, has announced that Alberta came in third highest for tuition increases at four per cent, and first for increases in additional compulsory fees at over 30 per cent. It included universities and degree-granting colleges, and according to Nicole Paquin of Statistics Canada, also places Alberta third for average cost of tuition at just over $5,500.

But Beverly Eastham, University of Alberta Students’ Union Vice President (External) and chair of the Council of Alberta University Students, argued that this has more to do with changes made by other provinces.

“Last year we were fourth highest and this year we are third highest and that’s because Nova Scotia’s really been working on doing a lot of changes to the tuition policy,” Eastham said. “The government really made it a priority to try and lower that number.”

However, according to Paquin, Alberta’s tuition increase of four per cent does conform to rules the Alberta government has set up to tie the maximum increase allowed to the Consumer Price Index, a policy that is favoured by CAUS.

“Third highest isn’t were we would as CAUS like to see Alberta in those numbers, but we’re quite happy with the tuition regulation as it is where tuition is tied to CPI because it does bring the ability for students to know what tuition will increase to next year,” Eastham said.

This predictability isn’t mirrored in regulations regarding additional compulsory fees, which increased substantially over last year in Alberta, and averaged out to over $900 this year. According to Paquin, this increase is mostly caused by an increase in compulsory fees from $700 to $900 at the U of A.

As it stands, compulsory fees are set according to a cost-recovery basis whereby fees are issued only to recover costs and not to be put towards profit. However, these rules are restricted to a set of guidelines that do not carry much force.

“There is something in the province’s books about [compulsory fees] but it’s not very solid,” Eastham said. “We’re interested in maybe exploring if we could move it into a regulation or if there is anything that could be done to just make it a little more apparent that this is something the institution should be doing.”

All of this comes at a time when compulsory fees may play a larger role in students’ overall tuition as the U of A looks for ways to make up its $59-million budget deficit, $20 million of which the administration is wanting students to cover.

One of the ways this could be done is through a type of additional compulsory fee called a market modifier. This fee would tie the price of certain programs to the market price of programs of similar calibre.

“Market modifier is saying ‘the market in Canada for this program is currently a lot higher than what we charge and so we will apply this market modifier to bring that up to the mid-level of tuition rates’,” Eastham said.

The University is also looking at ways of cutting costs by streamlining services. For instance, the Students’ Union is looking at streamlining services concerning program advice and transfering.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the quality of the University’s services will decrease, as both the University and the Students’ Union have made efforts to maintain the level of services offered.

“The understanding now is that the $59 million is to basically just hold the line where we are right now, so nothing will get worse, but it doesn’t necessarily look like any of that money is going to make things better,” Eastham added.