Government policy is not protecting students at Camosun College against excessive tuition increases. In 2005, the BC government set in place a tuition limit policy that limits post-secondary institutions to increasing tuition fees for existing programming by a maximum of two percent a year. New programming, however, can be set at any tuition level that the institution chooses.
The governing BC Liberal party has frozen post-secondary institutional funding. Inflation accounts for about a $2 million increase in cost to Camosun each year, effectively amounting to a two percent yearly cut to the college’s budget. One way that the college has tried to deal with these cuts is to use a technicality and possible loophole within government policy to consistently increase tuition fees beyond the two percent cap.
While “new” should imply programming that hasn’t existed in the past or that has seen major changes, the college has interpreted the policy to mean that any programming that has been modified can now count as “new” programming.
The college has used this interpretation to raise tuition of existing programming well beyond the cap. Some classes get slightly restructured and have astounding tuition increases.
The Camosun College Student Society has met with the Ministry of Advanced Education and has requested that it look into this issue. We hope the ministry will recognize the policy violations occurring at Camosun and refuse to allow exceptions to tuition cap.