Carleton is hiking tuition fees for students by an average of three per cent in the 2013-2014 academic year, citing a continued shortage of provincial government funding to universities.
The hike means a typical bachelor of arts or science student will see their tuition increase approximately $205, according to the difference between 2012-13 and 2013-14 tuition fees estimated by financial services online. The exact sum varies across programs.
International students’ fees—which are not regulated by the government—will go up eight per cent, or approximately $1,373 for a B.A. student, according to Carleton’s 2013-14 budget.
The tuition hike is the maximum allowed under the new framework released by the Ontario government, which capped hikes to three per cent each year for the next four years.
The cap for the last seven years was at five per cent, according to a press release from the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.
Each percentage point increase in tuition fees means approximately $1.8 million more for the university.
“Everybody says tuition is high, things cost money,” Carleton president Roseann Runte said. “Well, I can’t do anything about things costing money. When the prices go up, I have to pay for it.”
Runte added that she could not expect governments to “turn around and give us a lot more money.”
She said that one of the ways the university could deal with this would be to continue raising money for student financial support programs, and said Carleton’s programs are some of the strongest in the country.
A majority of the university’s board of governors approved the university’s 2013-14 budget, with the hike included.
Kelly Black, former Graduate Students’ Association president and a student representative on the board, voted against the budget.
Black said the university is not looking at other ways of lessening the burden on students.
He cited the construction of a new parking garage at the north end of campus, which is slated to cost the university $22.5 million, according to the minutes of a March Board of Governors meeting.
“That’s a lot of tuition fee increases that we’re using to build a parkade,” Black said, calling the university’s priorities “out of whack with the reality of students.”
However, Carleton’s vice-president (finance) Duncan Watt said the parking garage was not related to the fee hike. He said the budget stream for services like parking was separate from tuition, and that revenues from parking charges—not tuition fees—were going towards paying for new parking facilities.
According to Watt, the university is seeing a one per cent cut across most departments. Without the tuition hike, departments would have to cut their budgets by 3.5 per cent.
Alexander Golovko, president of the Carleton University Students’ Association, voted in favour of the budget, but said that “tuition fee increases are undesirable and difficult for any student to swallow.”
“I did raise the point that more could be done by both the university and the student associations by creating more avenues for student funding through scholarships and grants,” Golovko said via email.
Golovko, an international student, called for international student fees to be regulated.
Black also took issue with the disproportionate increase in international fees, saying they were being used to plug holes in university budgets.
“International students are sought, are brought in, to prop up an underfunded system,” he said.
Watt said Carleton was simply following a trend in Ontario of international fees rising more than domestic fees.
“Our strategy is to try and have our international tuition fees to be in the middle of the pack where other Ontario universities are,” he said.
Tuition fees from students now account for more than half of Carleton’s $377 million budget.
