THUNDER BAY – The Ford government’s announcement it will again freeze university and college tuition fees in 2022-2023 is being received with skepticism by student leaders, who say it does little to address affordability issues.
“I think initially it does come as great news to people, hearing it’s been frozen,” said Lahama Naeem, president of the Lakehead University Student Union (LUSU). “But when you look into the nitty-gritty of it, you realize it’s not the most sustainable option.”
“This minimal support is not really noticed by the average student, who are already paying some of the highest tuition [fees] in the country, while they have access to the lowest per-student funding.”
She noted the freeze doesn’t apply to international students, who now make up close to 20 per cent of Lakehead students and pay over $25,000 a year in fees at the school, and more for some programs like Engineering.
Domestic students pay upwards of $6,500 in tuition and ancillary fees for undergraduate programs, with some ranging higher.
The fact the province's tuition fee freezes are not accompanied with new funding for universities and colleges is leading schools to turn increasingly to international students and corporate donations, said Kayla Weiler, national executive representative with the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario, which represents over 350,000 students including those at Lakehead.
International recruitment is a strategy Lakehead has embraced, but Naeem is concerned schools are leaning on international students to balance the books.
“We really believe that education shouldn’t be funded on the backs of students and that treating international students as profit machines instead of equals and important parts of the community – it’s wrong and it’s unsustainable.”
In a release announcing the freeze Wednesday, the Ford government touted its moves to cut tuition fees by 10 per cent in 2019 and keep them frozen since as unprecedented in Ontario's history, saying it’s reduced the amount of tuition fees students pay by about $450 million a year.
Student leaders call that misleading, pointing out the government also slashed financial supports, including a grant program that covered tuition costs completely for low-income students.
The Ford government has also consistently spent less than it has budgeted for post-secondary education, Weiler said.
“It’s like a mirage – It looks like they’re doing really good work for students, but in reality they’re doing the bare minimum.”
Eyeing a provincial election just months away in June, Weiler said students are hoping to see post-secondary issues on the radar, after being largely ignored in the 2018 election.
The CFS will call on parties to present immediate plans to reduce tuition fees, and longer-term goals to eliminate them completely, she said.
Naeem hopes more grant funding will be restored, saying it’s crucial to ensure students from low-income households have equitable access to education.
She also believes students and schools shouldn’t have to wait to learn their financial fate each year.
“This idea of freezing tuition year by year… is maybe not the most sustainable way of doing it," she said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen next year, [or] in the next five to ten years.”
Lakehead University declined a request to comment for this story.
