The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) sent out a membership advisory on May 25 stating some graduate students’ tuition fees have been increased above the five per cent provincially regulated guidelines.
According to GSA president Michael Bueckert, Carleton’s vice-president (finance) Duncan Watt said most graduate student tuition fees would be frozen at zero per cent during April’s Board of Governors meeting.
But Bueckert said not only did some graduate students have their tuition increased, some of the increases surpassed the maximum amount allowed by the province.
Bueckert said the increases were an error on the part of the university and added that senior administration moved quickly to correct the fee increases above five per cent.
Bruce Winer, assistant vice-president (institutional research and planning) at Carleton, said Watt’s figures at the board meeting were derived using a formula to calculate graduate tuition fees in a way that would balance the overall increase to zero.
For example, he said while some PhD fees were going down, others will be slightly increased.
“We rolled back the upper year fees. So nobody was seeing [an] increase above four per cent,” Winer said.
Winer said switching programs could result in tuition fees going up more than expected.
He added that calculating tuition fee increases from the previous year compared to this year is usually a false way to demonstrate the per cent increase due to differing circumstances from student to student, and that administration will ensure fee increases remain in the four per cent range.
However, Bueckert added it is disappointing to see tuition increasing much higher than graduate students had expected.
“Students at Carleton already pay among the highest tuition in the country and there is clearly a lack of transparency when fee increases are hidden from the Board of Governors,” Bueckert said. “[The tuition cap] clearly applies to all students, regardless of where they are in their degree.”
He said there are some underlying issues about graduate tuition fee increases that still need to be addressed.
Bueckert said in an email that administration told the GSA they believed the more than five per cent increase would “not be a violation of provincial policy.”
He added the GSA disagrees with the administration and said their position is “based on a close reading of the tuition framework, in which the five per cent cap is very clearly intended to protect students from excessive increases.”
Bueckert said the GSA are in talks with the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario and the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities to ask for further clarification.
