The Board of Governors voted to increase tuition by two per cent for returning domestic and international students and four per cent for new international students at its meeting yesterday.
After a lengthy discussion, Board members voted in favour of the increases in a 14–4 vote. Student representatives Max Holmes, Georgia Yee and Shola Fashanu voted against the motion, as did faculty representative Mark Mac Lean.
UBC Provost and VP Academic Andrew Szeri justified the increases by citing the necessity for funding for UBC to maintain its current operations. According to Szeri, the increase will inject roughly $18 million into the university’s budget for the 2022/23 academic year.
“We aim to retain the ability to mount excellent teaching and research programs across all of the degree programs,” he said.
UBC President Santa Ono added that UBC’s international student tuition is less than other competitive universities such as McGill University and the University of Toronto, and UBC VP Finance and Operations Peter Smailes later commented that the increase was essential to the feasibility of the 2022/23 budget, of which the Board voted unanimously in favour at the same meeting.
Mac Lean voiced opposition to the increase. He said he was concerned with the social cost to students and encouraged improvements in how the Board’s rationale is communicated to students, 90 per cent of whom voiced opposition to the increase in a recent survey.
“There have been enormous financial impacts on students here at the university and their families,” said Mac Lean. “I’m doing a bit of social calculus … how do we communicate to our students that we heard from them?”
Holmes argued that continuously increasing tuition is not a sustainable method of increasing funds long term, and expressed a desire for the university to push for more government subsidies amid the BC Government’s recently-launched funding review.
“As a revenue source, we can’t continuously increase tuition, especially if we’re trying to keep up with inflation because we’re going to have to outpace inflation,” Holmes said. “I do think it’ll be important to have this conversation next year and respect the arguments that have been brought forward by the administration.”
Affordability plan approved
Board members also voted unanimously in favour of implementing UBC’s new student affordability strategy.
The plan — which has been in development for nearly a year by a specialized task force — makes 10 recommendations for how the university can better address issues of student affordability, including revising the tuition consultation process, addressing cost of living and fundraising for needs-based aid programs.
Students have been calling for this plan for years. Holmes and Yee voted against last year’s budget due to the university not yet having a comprehensive affordability plan.
VP Students Ainsley Carry presented the plan, outlining some of the recommendations and the categories under which they are classified.
“We hear a lot about student pressures around food insecurity, housing insecurity, textbook costs and matters related to childcare and transportation,” said Carry. “Those issues are putting a tremendous amount of pressure on students who are also trying to study and just have a better quality of life on campus.”
Szeri also outlined some of the recommendations, including improving online financial planning tools and exploring the development of a multi-year tuition framework that would see tuition increases limited to every few years rather than annually.
Yee questioned the long-term vision of the plan, specifically what it would look like beyond the five-year mark after its implementation. Carry responded that within that timeframe, the task force hopes that its recommendations will be fully embedded in the student support process.
UBC Chancellor Steven Point raised concerns over the plan’s lack of explicit consideration for affordability among Indigenous students. Carry responded that while he agreed with Point, the task force did not consider specific affordability impacts for demographic groups due to its limited timeframe. He added that such impacts will be considered long term.