NDP to table legislation on university tuition, fees
Notley announces pending guidelines are imminent after two-year review
Legislation governing Alberta post-secondary tuition will be tabled this fall, following a review launched close to two years ago.
Premier Rachel Notley said Thursday the legislation would provide a “clear path forward” on guidelines for student tuition.
But legislation may well take in more than that, stemming as it does from a top-to-bottom review of everything post-secondary, from mandatory non-instructional fees and student aid to international student tuition.
The review drew more than 4,200 online survey responses. A 20-person advisory group was then tasked with figuring out a more transparent and predictable system for fee increases, and an external consultant was hired to examine and analyze Alberta’s current post-secondary funding model.
Last September, Notley said she hoped to have a good sense of where government was going with the review in time for Budget 2018. That didn’t happen. On Thursday, she said it was a case of the government “doing our homework and making sure we get it right.”
University of Alberta president David Turpin said he isn’t frustrated by the delay.
“We have been given a lot of support in terms of operating-grants support and backfill for tuition freezes, so as long as that continues, we’re pleased,” he said.
Whatever is contained in the legislation will follow a series of consecutive tuition freezes enacted by the NDP government when it took power in 2015.
Popular with student groups, freezes weren’t as warmly received by institutions, being likened by former MacEwan University president David Atkinson as “being stoned to death with popcorn.”
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.”
Adam Brown, vice-president academic of the University of Alberta Students’ Union, called Thursday ’s development “good news.”
“Having that confirmation from the premier that something is actually happening in the fall is very reassuring for students,” he told Postmedia.
Brown is crossing his fingers the legislation will include a threeyear tuition model to make life more predictable for students.
“That’s a big thing for us, because while a tuition freeze has been great and it has saved students a lot of money, they have also not known what things are going to look like (in the future),” he said.
“Historically, in other provinces that have had tuition freezes, tuition has shot up right after a freeze has been lifted, so we hope that’s not going to be the case here.”
Brown said the other big-ticket item the union is hoping for is regulation of international-student fees to prevent them from “being used as a cash cow.” The issue helped spark vocal protests at the university earlier this year.
Notley and Advanced Education Minister Marlin Schmidt confirmed the upcoming legislation at a U of A event Thursday promoting the government’s fiveyear, $50-million investment in post-secondary technology education.
The cash has created more than 400 tech seats for Alberta postsecondary students this fall, 169 of which are in Edmonton.
That will expand to at least 3,000 new tech-related seats in Alberta by 2023.