![\"Camosun](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/DSC_0649.jpg\")
<\/a>Roche points to the June 15, 2015 Camosun College Education Council meeting minutes, which show the Education Council approving \u201cprogram revisions\u201d to Civil Engineering Technology courses (the minutes are available online at camosun.ca).<\/p>\n
According to minister of advanced education Andrew Wilkinson, the college needs to stick to the two-percent rule for existing programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cEngineering Technology diplomas at Camosun College are existing programs and are subject to the annual tuition limit increase policy of two percent,\u201d says Wilkinson. \u201cCamosun will be submitting a written request for formal review by the Ministry to have these programs considered as new under the tuition limit policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roche says he has two primary goals: to bring to light the fact that \u201cCamosun and all other institutions are critically underfunded,\u201d and to show that it\u2019s not going to be good if the college\u2019s Engineering programs cost more than UVic, which, he says, they will if the program\u2019s tuition is increased by 43.9 percent, which was the original proposal.<\/p>\n
However, Camosun vice president of education John Boraas admits that the college made a mistake when doing the initial calculations for the new tuition cost, using national data instead of provincial.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things I want to put on the table is that one of our principles is that we want to be in the middle of the pack in terms of tuition,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen we did this proposal one of the things I realize now is that we looked at the middle of the pack nationally, not provincially, so this does put us at the very top. So there\u2019s no doubt, no matter how this comes down, we will do another analysis to put ourselves in the provincial pack. We just used the wrong comparators.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas says that while there will still be a tuition raise if the government approves it, it won\u2019t be 43.9 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis percentage is what we put forward initially and is one there will be some change to,\u201d he says, \u201cand that\u2019s dependent on what government decides.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roche does acknowledge that Camosun\u2019s tuition is comparatively low, and that the cost does need to go up, just, he says, \u201cnot 43 percent in one year.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe transfers from the ministry to the institutions have been getting cut by millions of dollars; meanwhile, the price of everything goes up, so they are desperate for money, and they don\u2019t want to cancel programs, but if they don\u2019t get money from somewhere, then they are going to have to cancel programs. They can\u2019t force it out of the ministry, but they can squeeze it out of us. It\u2019s an abusive relationship,\u201d says Roche.<\/p>\n
Boraas says letters were sent out to all students in the affected programs explaining that tuition would only increase for new students, although he\u2019s not convinced everyone read them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know when I get a letter from my bank, I often don\u2019t read them, so I\u2019m sure it\u2019s the same when they get a letter from me,\u201d says Boraas.<\/p>\n
He says Camosun has sent the requests for the tuition increase to the Ministry of Advanced Education, but until they hear back, \u201ceverything is up in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re in year one right now, year two would see no increase in cost. So, in other words, you\u2019re protected. Once you\u2019ve started and we\u2019ve said, \u2018Here\u2019s the cost for a program,\u2019 we\u2019re not going to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas says that the college wants to do everything as transparently and openly as they possibly can.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got letters out to students, all those kinds of things. The intent was, \u2018Here\u2019s, black and white, what we\u2019re trying to do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas stresses that it is in the Ministry of Education\u2019s hands now, and \u201cwe\u2019ll just respect whatever comes out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also says that the college kept a close eye on the content to ensure they met the criteria for being considered \u201cnew.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that every single course we agreed was eligible for tuition change was a course that was changed, and not just by combining other courses,\u201d says Boraas. \u201cTruly new. It had to be at least 50 percent brand new to the program for us to accept it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas adds that Camosun is trying to keep its programming in the face of government cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just trying to very clearly move forward with being sure that we don\u2019t have to cut more programs because we don\u2019t have the money. So it\u2019s that balance, and I want to do it well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Camosun student Rachael Grant, who is one of four student representatives on the Education Council board, says that \u201cit\u2019s really an unfortunate decision, and it\u2019s horribly unjust to see tuition increased by this level.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI personally see that our college is doing this for a reason,\u201d says Grant. \u201cOur institution is chronically underfunded by our provincial government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grant points out that the same thing happened with English 150 transitioning to English 151.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt costs more, and it\u2019s basic English that everyone has to take. I don\u2019t understand how you can change basic English enough to justify increasing tuition over the two-percent cap. This is a very common practice. This is just them trying to get by. The provincial government knows they\u2019re doing it, but they don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Update: After this story ran, Camosun student Blair Roche contacted <\/em>Nexus to correct a statement he had made in a quote. He said that there was a Ministry of Advanced Education-set mandatory fee rate for new instructional programs, not amendments to existing programs. Roche says that what he\u00a0meant to say was that there is an exception to the ministry\u2019s maximum fee increase rate (two percent) for new instructional programs, not amendments to existing programs.<\/em><\/p>\n The tuition for Camosun\u2019s Civil Engineering Technology program will increase above the two percent allowed for an existing program if the Ministry of Advanced Education deems it as being \u201cnew,\u201d and one Camosun student has started a petition in protest of this potential increase. The Ministry of Advanced Education has a two-percent tuition increase cap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-february-17-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11679"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11728,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11679\/revisions\/11728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}