Camosun students are all members of The British Columbia Federation of Students (image provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cWe want the government to provide the funding that they have not for years, that\u2019s one of the things. We would like the tuition to be frozen where it is right now\u2026 Because it\u2019s not sustainable for a lot of our students,\u201d says Singh.<\/p>\n
Because the provincial government has decoupled funding from inflation, Singh says many students are experiencing financial hardships while trying to gain an education.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe hear all the time stories about students not having food,\u201d says Singh. \u201cLast year, we were doing a food drive, and a student showed up saying, \u2018Oh, the only thing I\u2019ve been having for the past few months is popcorn because that\u2019s cheap.\u2019 So, they were just living off popcorn\u2026 Some of them live in their cars, they cannot afford rentals. And you know how the market right now is, it\u2019s really, really expensive for a student to sustain in these markets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Fund It, Fix It campaign suggests a cap on international student tuition increases (domestic students currently have an annual two-percent cap, but there isn\u2019t one for international students). The campaign also calls for a better strategy for welcoming international students into Canada.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe importance of international education strategies,\u201d says Singh, \u201cis that it sets guidelines for post-secondary institutions, so that when they are bringing in new students, how do you treat them? How do you make sure that they get a home when they\u2019re here? How do you make sure that they come prepared to live their life in a whole new world, right? A lot of them come in from very different societies, which have a really, really different culture\u2026 So having those things around having a set guideline for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
To bring more awareness to the campaign, Singh attended the BCFS Advocacy Week in October, where he spoke with local MLAs and informed them about the students struggling in their municipalities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cFund It, Fix It, we have been doing it for a few years now,\u201d says Singh. \u201cObviously, putting in these asks, we created a lobby document for every year. So, we had the capacity to present it in October this year when we did our BC Federation of Students lobby week. So we were down at the parliament, meeting the local MLAs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government issued a funding review in response to the current funding model not supplying sufficient financial support for students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe most important recommendation that we have is the funding model review to be published,\u201d he says. \u201cSo universities, colleges, the administration of these universities and colleges, student societies, everyone participated in the funding review that hasn\u2019t been released. They are reviewing it at this point\u2026 We have been patiently waiting for the funding review to be published. Once that has been published, obviously, we would hope that government starts on working towards a new funding model or fixing the things that are missing in the funding.\u201d<\/p>\n
See funditfixit.ca<\/a> for more information on the campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British Columbia Federation of Students (BCFS) is aiming to freeze student tuition with its Fund It, Fix It campaign. The campaign also recommends that the provincial government invest an additional $500 million annually for post-secondary-institution operational costs so the institutions don\u2019t have an over-reliance on domestic and international student tuition. Camosun College Student Society […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24710,"comment_status":"closed","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":[13,301],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-november-29-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24709","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=24709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24711,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24709\/revisions\/24711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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