Over 1,000 U of C students sign tuition increase rejection

Angela Larsen

TAKING A STAND U of C students put together a day of action against tuition hikes.

The University of Calgary Students’ Union hosted a Tuition Day of Action on February 2, where students voiced concerns about potential tuition increases.

The government of Alberta currently has a tuition fee policy that ties its increases to the Consumer Price Index, meaning that tuition cannot increase by more than 1.5 per cent this year.

But the U of C administration is submitting a proposal to the government that would allow them to increase tuition for professional faculties based on market modifiers, meaning that some faculties could see an increase of up to 47 per cent.

Business will see the largest increase with a 46.5 per cent to its tuition, while Law will see the smallest increase with 15.4 per cent. The only other faculties seeing an increase will be Engineering and Medicine, at 38.7 and 27.8 per cent, respectively.

At the Day of Action, students had the opportunity to sign a petition that would be sent to both the Board of Governors and the provincial government asking them to reject the University’s proposal. Approximately 1,100 students signed each petition.

Kay She, the Vice President (External) for the SU, said that the government needs to stand by their original agreement.

“Our hope at this point lies with the Alberta government, that they are going to stick with the promise they made to Albertans,” she said. “Our University has come up with these proposals that the government needs to reject, because this is not affordable and this is not accessible postsecondary education.”

As a second part of the event, the SU invited Provost Alan Harrison to answer student’s questions in a public forum.

“We saw from the public forum that students were outraged at this proposal. The U of C is not usually a very politically active campus,” she said. “But students are really mobilizing around this issue. This is something that affects them greatly and concerns them greatly.”

She also said that the University should look at other ways to save money, rather than putting the burden on students.

“We’re asking our University to take a look at how their central administration runs, and how they could reduce their expenditures. Our faculty association is pushing for a fiscal audit of our University, and we support them. We think that this public institution needs to be held financially accountable and needs to be financially transparent,” she said.

Harrison said that tuition increases are necessary for professional programs to maintain the quality of the programs.

“We recognize that these programs are programs where we are out of line with our competitors. If we are to maintain our competitive position [...] we need to be spending as much money on these programs as they are to ensure that we can offer programs of comparable quality,” he said.

Harrison said that he realizes students will be affected by increases, but the University will do everything they can to help students by investing in student services.

“The students will obviously have to pay more and there will be in certain cases, one would presume, some amount of hardship for at least some of the students affected. We’ve tried to mitigate that by stressing that our plan is to set aside a chunk of the revenue to provide for students who need some form of financial support.”

The U of C’s budget is balanced for this year, but that is based on their latest information that their provincial funding will stay the same. However, this is not guaranteed until the release of the provincial budget on February 9.

“For the current year, 2009/2010, we are projecting no deficit. That’s not because we are comfortably off. That’s because we’ve made significant sacrifices within the institution,” Harrison said.

The government will advise the University on how they propose to suspend the tuition policy after the budget is released. At that point, its Board of Governors can make the final decision as late as April.

She emphasized that the sooner the University makes a decision, the sooner students can prepare.

“It’s not just a rhetorical arguments that we’re sending to the university, to the government, and to the public. It’s something that truly, truly affects students. It could mean the difference between continuing education or not,” she said.