Are B.C. Tuition Fees Out of Line?
So, are B.C. tuition fees out of line?
BC taxpayers pay more than 70 per cent of the cost of post secondary education, and tuition covers the rest. I’ve always been puzzled by the self-righteous attitude of a certain small segment of university and college students to the effect that taxpayers in general should be paying the full freight: 100 per cent.
Their argument goes something like this: “I am working so hard, and since education is so vital to society, society should pay me to do it.” Unfortunately, this overlooks the fact that investment in post-secondary education benefits not simply society but the student as well. So if it benefits the student handsomely, should its cost be borne entirely by taxpayers, including those who dropped out after high school or earlier? I don’t buy it.
But in truth, higher education costs have become a huge budgeting factor in family decisions. We have not yet reached Harvard’s annual tuition in the $30,000 (U.S. dollars) range but we are creeping in that direction. We are going to have to move more aggressively on the financial aid front.
Meanwhile, according to Statistics Canada, B.C.’s 2004/05 university undergraduate fees are ranked 5th in Canada, the same as last year. B.C. still has the lowest undergraduate university tuition fees in the country west of Quebec, other than Manitoba.
Under the previous government, tuitions were frozen at a time when fees were increasing in other jurisdictions -- an average of almost 10 per cent each year nationally through the 1990’s. So in the last several years, under new rules which set B.C. colleges and universities loose to charge whatever they felt appropriate, B.C. has been playing catch-up.
Students paid a price during the tuition freeze era: they were increasingly shut out of classes and programs through lack of resources. Stats Canada data show B.C.’s university enrolment growth lagged behind the rest of the country during the tuition freeze.
Circumstances have changed. The University Presidents Council of B.C. reports that university enrolment in the first two years after termination of the freeze, grew faster than enrolment growth during the last four years of the freeze.
The government has now committed to adding 25,000 new seats to institutions throughout the province by 2010. The stated goal is to have the capacity for access to university for any student with a “B” average. New seats at institutions in Kelowna and Kamloops will reduce student costs by allowing them to study closer to home.
But get used to it: higher education is expensive, and destined to become more so.
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