{"id":12145,"date":"2016-06-23T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T16:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12145"},"modified":"2016-06-27T09:41:06","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T16:41:06","slug":"camosun-college-not-raising-civil-engineering-technology-tuition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/06\/23\/camosun-college-not-raising-civil-engineering-technology-tuition\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun College not raising Civil Engineering Technology tuition"},"content":{"rendered":"

In February, we reported on tuition for Camosun\u2019s Civil Engineering Technology program possibly going up by 43.9 percent<\/a>, which, as far as Camosun Civil Engineering student Blair Roche was concerned, went against the Ministry of Advanced Education\u2019s two-percent annual tuition-increase cap for existing programs (if program changes are significant enough for the Ministry to consider the program \u201cnew,\u201d the two-percent cap does not apply).<\/p>\n

Camosun College Vice President of Education John Boraas told Nexus<\/em> at the time that Camosun \u201cused the wrong comparators\u201d to set the proposed tuition rates, measuring tuition on a national level when they meant to measure it provincially.<\/p>\n

Roche started a petition in protest to the proposed increase, and he says he was recently informed by Camosun chair of Civil Engineering Technology Zo\u00eb Broom that tuition would not increase for this coming year. Roche says he is considering this \u201ca win,\u201d but he does wonder about Camosun\u2019s claims that they made a mistake in tuition calculation.<\/p>\n

\"Camosun<\/a>
Camosun student Blair Roche and his petition (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, all those guys are too smart and too well educated to make that kind of a mistake,\u201d says Roche. \u201cThey\u2019ve been working on this for years. They all know what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camosun Dean of Trades and Technology Eric Sehn says what the government gives Camosun now covers \u201cless than 50 percent of the actual cost of delivering programming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can understand and appreciate whenever students have concerns about tuition,\u201d says Sehn. \u201cWe share their concerns, of course, but what we\u2019re having to try to do is find that balance between sustainability for our programs and shrinking government funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without a raise in revenue, Sehn says it is particularly important to make sure the program is still run in a \u201ccutting edge\u201d way, and that the skills students learn are still on par with what employers are looking for.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why we have taxpayers\u2019 dollars to help subsidize the cost,\u201d says Sehn. \u201cIt\u2019s a real trick for us to be in Trades and in Technology because of the equipment requirements. We want to make sure that we stay as current as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roche feels that his petition, which contained 150 signatures from Camosun students, as well as another petition organized by the Camosun College Student Society, helped put pressure on the college to rethink their proposal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thinking that maybe all these complaints and whatnot from the student groups maybe put a little more scrutiny on the process,\u201d says Roche.<\/p>\n

Roche recognizes that the overarching problem goes beyond Camosun and is an issue impacting postsecondary throughout BC.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigher education is massively underfunded by the province,\u201d says Roche. \u201cIn reality, the two-percent tuition cap is window dressing in an effort to keep voters happy that something\u2019s being done about tuition, but, really, it\u2019s so easily manoeuvred around that it has no real value. There\u2019s no teeth to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In February, we reported on tuition for Camosun\u2019s Civil Engineering Technology program possibly going up by 43.9 percent, which, as far as Camosun Civil Engineering student Blair Roche was concerned, went against the Ministry of Advanced Education\u2019s two-percent annual tuition-increase cap for existing programs (if program changes are significant enough for the Ministry to consider […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12146,"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":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12145","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=12145"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12149,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12145\/revisions\/12149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}