Manitoba has low tuition, highest compulsory fees: StatsCan

Hidden costs complicate the tuition blame game

Tessa Vanderhart, Staff

A recent study shows that post-secondary funding issues are more than just skin deep: while the tuition freeze remains intact for Manitoba students, other fees continue to rise.

The Statistics Canada study, released Sept. 1, highlighted rising tuition in various professional fields, as well as for graduate and international students. Also, it noted that Manitoba students pay the most ‘compulsory’ fees of any province. With the recent addition of a $150 ancillary fee to the tuition of all Manitoba students, bringing the total to $786 per year, this increase has been particularly visible.

However, the Statscan study does not include compulsory fees in tuition; other universities keep the two separate, a step Manitoba provincial universities have only begun with the institution of ancillary fees for the upcoming academic year.

Nationally, the results of the study are unambiguously positive — Canada’s undergraduate students are facing the smallest increase in tuition for decades, half the previous year’s increase. Tuition is up, on average, by 3.9 per cent — lower than the average annual increase of 5.3 per cent, and the 1999-00 increase of 9.7 per cent.

In the province, average undergraduate tuition fees have risen one per cent in the past year, while compulsory fees have gone up by 25 per cent.

Phillippe Ouellette, national president of the Canadian Alliance of Students’ Associations (CASA) said that fighting for lower tuition remains a high priority, but there is little to be done about rising compulsory fees — the ancillary fees instituted this summer at the University of Manitoba, for example — which rely on the needs and priorities of individual universities.

He described ancillary fees as one of the hidden costs of attending university, which still serve as a financial barrier to university, as opposed to the more obvious compulsory fees.

“The big differentiation that is made on CASA’s side, that we provide the majority of lobbying for, is basically the tuition side of things: the idea that the problem with [tuition increases] and the reason why that is occurring is actually the inadequacy of governments, and the unwillingness of governments to see that [ancillary fees] are essentially being plopped onto students. They’re just kind of slacking on the front from funding,” said Ouellette.

Ouellette called on universities to be accountable for ancillary fee increases, ensuring a voice for student representation on major funding issues. He added that major changes to ancillary fees are usually done after a student referendum, or at the very least after consultation with the student union.

“Really, governments have no control over [ancillary fees],” said Ouellette, adding that, as a result, institutions consistently depend on students to raise money.

He emphasized that individuals and institutions cannot set the priorities of government, and said that, when no government funding appears, an increase in ancillary fees is an unavoidable last resort.

Amanda Aziz, UMSU president, said that the results of the study are disappointing; she emphasized that Manitoba has had the largest increase in ancillary fees in the country, despite relatively low increases in tuition.

“Certainly students appreciate the tuition fee freeze in the province, but if we’re going to allow ancillary fees to continue to increase, the . . . freeze is not going to have the same impact,” she said.

“That ancillary fee report — Manitoba won, but it could have been way worse had the ancillary fees not been decreased to $150 this year.”

Since 2000-01, graduate students have faced some of the biggest changes in tuition; this year, both Alberta and British Columbia have increases around 100 per cent.

However, graduate students in Manitoba actually face almost no explicit changes to tuition fees one of few provinces with this outcome excluding ancillary fees.

It is also notable that both Manitoba and Saskatchewan have the highest increase in tuition for international students this year: 37 per cent and 38.4 per cent, respectively.

Aziz said that she is disappointed by the university’s treatment of international students as an additional source of revenue, adding that some international graduate students now face 100 per cent increases in tuition.

“A member of the university has gone on the record as saying. . . . International students can be used as an additional source of revenue,” said Aziz. “International students are not at all treated as domestic students; they’re seen as a cash cow for universities that want to increase their revenues, and we think that is absurd.”