![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/IMG_2692-e1519066443484.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cThis is something that has happened all across post-secondary,\u201d says Boraas. \u201cI think you can look at any university and there will be 100-level courses that identify that it is sufficient to be taken instead of a Math 12 or a Math 11.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas says some of these pricing decisions came during a tough financial time when the college had to make some difficult budgetary decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were struggling to meet demand, and at that time the government was absolutely not providing additional resources,\u201d he says. \u201cWe were not in a great place financially, so we created courses that would allow us to add capacity because we had demand beyond what we could deliver in the ABE area, which, at that time, was tuition-free.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moen says Camosun is doing a fairly good job at making education accessible. The real issue, as far as he\u2019s concerned, is government funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super supportive of Camosun\u2019s role in this. Camosun, I\u2019m sure, would offer any course they could; it\u2019s whether or not they can make sure that it\u2019s funded so that Camosun can exist to be a huge access and resource for the south island,\u201d he says. \u201cThe biggest question is the current government and why they decided to offer something [when] they had no idea what they were offering. They kind of created a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Provincial minister of advanced education, skills and training Melanie Mark was unavailable to comment by deadline.<\/p>\n
Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) student services coordinator Michael Glover says the idea of high-school courses being paid for by the government \u201chas long been established.\u201d Glover says the college needed to be able to charge tuition for some of the courses, so they made changes to them, with the end result being some students who thought they would be getting free courses finding out that they had to pay for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey created some 100-level courses that were ABE courses with enhanced content,\u201d says Glover. \u201cSo students who found themselves in these courses as prerequisites for the courses they were about to do went, \u2018Good news\u2014my courses are going to be free, because I\u2019m taking this course to upgrade so that I can get into these other courses, so that makes it an Adult Basic Education course.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas says the college will be doing a review of the ABE program to make sure the pricing policies are fair.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is a good one,\u201d says Boraas. \u201cTechnically, the courses have enough differences that it\u2019s legitimate, but the question remains that they\u2019re very similar courses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas adds that the decision to charge for some courses was not ideal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWould I identify it as ideal and a completely transparent practice? No, I wouldn\u2019t, but it\u2019s consistent with what the system has done, and, as I say, there are enough differences, but definitely they can be used for that purpose,\u201d says Boraas. \u201cSome students would rather have a 100-level course on their transcript and sometimes get credit, some students would rather have it be tuition-free, so it\u2019s giving both groups kind of what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas says that if a student takes University Transfer courses and an ABE course, they are not eligible for student loans. He says this was a factor in coming up with some enhanced courses\u2014which are similar, but not identical, to existing courses\u2014that would make students eligible for loans.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re reviewing all of our access delivery in light of lots of legislative changes, so if people have concerns, they\u2019re welcome to submit them and it will be part of what we look at and examine,\u201d says Boraas.<\/p>\n
Moen acknowledges that 100-level courses will never be free; he says that it\u2019s not just at Camosun that this happens, and that it all comes down to government funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe different distance education places have to figure out ways to do this viably, because, yes, they are somewhat funded by the province, but if they were to offer all these courses, pay the instructors\u2026 At the end of the day, if the cheque doesn\u2019t come through through the government, they won\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Camosun student has expressed concern over the college charging for certain 100-level courses instead of offering them as free 000-level Adult Basic Education (ABE) courses. First-year Camosun University Transfer student Ryan Moen says that the college\u2019s wording about some courses is confusing, pointing to Math 173 as an example. \u201cIt advertises itself as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15441,"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":[13,207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-february-21-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15440","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=15440"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15443,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15440\/revisions\/15443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}