![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/IMG_1113.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cI don\u2019t think the college is complying with the spirit of the tuition fee policy,\u201d says Turcotte. \u201cTheir interpretation is that new programming can cancel out pre-existing courses by tweaking them a bit and getting rid of old courses.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Boraas, vice president of academics at Camosun College, denies that the college is doing this.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it really is new curriculum. I would say the Student Society and I, we\u2019ve had some good conversations about this, I understand the concern, but we\u2019re trying to carve a path that\u2019s absolutely within legislation and that leaves it so we\u2019re not having to cancel programs as well. It\u2019s that balance that we\u2019re trying to carve out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The provincial government\u2019s approach to tuition fees has been to distribute the costs of education between students, institutions, government, and the private sector. Specifically, the government decided to limit tuition and mandatory fee increases to the rate of inflation, which accounts for approximately $2 million worth of tuition increases and a two percent yearly cut to the college\u2019s annual budget.<\/p>\n
According to Boraas, provincial government regulation strictly prohibits the college from raising the price of a course past two percent and that inflation doesn\u2019t play much of a part in the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not even tied to inflation; it\u2019s an arbitrary number that we\u2019re given each year,\u201d says Boraas. \u201cHowever, there are cases when the government does allow us to increase tuition for existing programs. For example, with practical nursing, that was a provincially revised program and tuition at that point was changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CCSS\u2019 Turcotte also believes Camosun is well aware that it can raise revenue by cutting courses and creating new ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere isn\u2019t much incentive for the school to revise courses; there\u2019s a much greater financial incentive to cancel courses and bring in new ones,\u201d says Turcotte. \u201cCamosun\u2019s recent decisions are based on their interpretation of the tuition-fee policy, and once they bring in a new course, they can charge whatever they want for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite being disappointed with the college\u2019s decisions around these tuition increases, Turcotte doesn\u2019t believe that Camosun deserves all of the blame for this money debacle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really feel that if the provincial government had kept up funding and grants for the college, we wouldn\u2019t be going through this,\u201d he says. \u201cIn a way, Camosun is being forced to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Camosun says they are not doing anything underhanded.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe legislation allows us to increase tuition by two percent annually, so we do that,\u201d says Boraas. \u201cAnd we also, where curriculum is new, apply tuition that is always lower but competitive with what other institutions are charging. That\u2019s when curriculum is new.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) claims that Camosun College is practising unfair methods of raising student tuition fees. On September 1, 2005, the BC government implemented a tuition-limit policy, which limits postsecondary institutions to raising school fees for current programs by a maximum of two percent annually. But, according to Michel Turcotte, CCSS executive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6633,"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":[13,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-march-20-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632","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=6632"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6664,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632\/revisions\/6664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}