Initial recommendations from post-secondary tuition review due in fall

A first round of recommendations from the province’s top-to-bottom review of education funding is expected by the fall, Premier Rachel Notley said Wednesday.

Launched late last year, the post-secondary review is looking at everything from tuition, mandatory non-instructional fees, student aid, international student tuition as well as potential funding models for the province’s 26 publicly-funded advanced education institutions.

“We certainly hope to have a good sense of where we are going in time for the budget in 2018,” Notley told a news conference Wednesday at NAIT.

“I think it’s a question of finding the right balance. My view has always been tuition is an important thing for us to slowly try to bring down.”

While reaffirming their previous budget announcement of a tuition freeze for the 2017-18 academic year, Notley wouldn’t speculate on whether her government has concerns about the impact of lifting that freeze ahead of the 2019 election.

Widely lauded by students and student groups, the tuition freeze, put in place by the NDP government when it took power in 2015, has not been as warmly received by institutions that lost their ability to increase tuition and mandatory non-instructional fees.

Last October, former MacEwan University president David Atkinson described tuition freezes as like “being stoned to death with popcorn” and, around the same time, current University of Alberta president David Turpin told a board of governors meeting that while the public policy to freeze tuition was fine, “there’s cost and … someone has to pay for it.”

“It’s never been pretty coming out of a freeze and the longer the freeze, the uglier it is,” he told the meeting.

The current tuition freeze is slated to end at the conclusion of the 2017-18 academic year, just in time for the next election, meaning whatever recommendations comes from their review could become a hot-button election issue.

“For many many years Alberta, when combined with non-instructional fees and mandatory fees, had amongst the highest tuition fees in the country” Notley said.

“That is not a formula for economic growth and it’s not a formula for investing in our kids.

“As we look at ways in which to streamline funding and rationalize funding, we are going to look at balancing all of those things.”

LARRY WONG Alberta Premier Rachel Notley watches a demonstration by NAIT machinist program instructor Ryan Reeves on Wednesday. Notley spoke with staff and students about the importance of post-secondary education and the need to keep it affordable.