PCs approve tuition hikes to 25 Alberta programs three days before Christmas
Posted Dec 22, 2014 5:28 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Alberta Government is approving tuition increases to 25 post-secondary programs, which they say will affect eight per cent of Campus Alberta students and less than one per cent of all programs in the province.
The possibility came up back in the summer and on Monday, Minister of Innovation and Advanced Education Don Scott said they were approved to correct tuition anomalies between programs in Alberta and those across Canada.
The changes will not impact existing students and Scott said institutions will receive around $21 million in additional revenue.
The proposed announcement led to some protests by students, but Scott said it’s about improving the quality of the programs.
“When institutions have access to market adjustments like we’ve just granted, that’s going to have a direct benefit, I believe to program quality that students are going to receive,” he said, adding there are plenty of financial aid options available.
But Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley said it shows a major lack of foresight.
“At a time that we’re talking about the need to diversity our economy and plan for the future, to wean ourselves off of oil and gas, one of the things we have to do is make sure that post-secondary education and training programs are more accessible to Alberta youth, not less and this decision flies in the face of that,” she said.
There’s also a wide range of increases, for example the University of Alberta Master of Science program will increase by eight per cent, while the the school’s law program will increase by around 56 per cent and the University of Calgary Law program is going up 24 per cent.
The timing of the announcement also comes three days before Christmas and while most students are off of campuses, which Notley is taking the government to task on.
“Days before Christmas at a time when the Prentice Tories hope nobody will notice is ridiculous, it is the second-most cynical thing that I’ve seen this government do in the last six days,” she said, alluding to last week’s floor-crossing of the nine Wildrose MLAs joining the PCs.
As for the timing, Scott said with the issue coming up in the summer, he wanted more time to make sure he asked all stakeholders involved.
“The bottom line is I wanted to make sure that our institutions had the information they needed so that they could start adjusting their budgets to coordinate the next year, so I’ve made a commitment to make sure that I had them done by 2014, which is what we’re doing today,” he said.
