U of A students to receive 25 per cent refund on U-Pass fees

Students at the University of Alberta, MacEwan University, NAIT, and NorQuest College will be receiving a 25 per cent refund — approximately $45.00 — on U-Pass fees. This is due to university courses being delivered online from January 5 until February 28. Between undergraduate and graduate students at the U of A, the total amount refunded will be just under $2 million.

Current students can expect this to be applied to their BearTracks account to go towards tuition for the 2022-23 year. Graduating students or students leaving the U of A will receive a cheque in the mail.

According to Rowan Ley, UASU president, this refund was due to them advocating for Edmonton Transit Service (ETS) to consider a rebate.

“Every post-secondary [institution] in Edmonton will get this rebate but it was UASU that negotiated the rebate,” Ley said. “Emily [Kimani] and I personally negotiated this with ETS. Every student in Metro Edmonton is going to get it, but it wasn’t really a coalition effort. We asked for it on behalf of the U of A, and then they agreed to give it to everyone.”

Ley described this refund was a way for the UASU to give students a “little bit of financial help” during a “tough time.”

“We know that students are facing a lot of financial pressures right now, and we know that they weren’t able to make as much use of their U-Pass as they usually would,” Ley said. “So this was a way for [the UASU] to making sure that they were receiving a little bit of financial help in a tough time.”

“We felt it was fair that that reduction would come from a service that they just weren’t able to use quite as much as they would have been able to in a normal year.”

The feedback from the U of A community on this refund has been “entirely positive” with students being “quite pleased,” according to Ley.