The HSGSA Stance on Continuing Fee Hikes
In the limited time available, the Graduate Student Association has opposed the University’s proposal for increasing continuing fees to graduate students and has consulted students via survey and comments.
The proposed increase in continuing fees of nearly 330% is unjust and detrimental to both our current and future graduate students. The FGS has not provided any solid rationale for increasing continuing fees for Graduate Students, nor did they disclose any sort of budget for how these new tuition funds would be spent to help improve the faculty. We also do not agree with the FGS’ opinion that increasing continuing fees will help motivate students to complete their degree faster.
We do not believe this increase will benefit current or future Graduate Students. It will not motivate our students to complete their degrees faster, nor will it attract top quality students to this university.
Specific concerns:
1. We do not believe additional financial burden will help motivate students to complete their studies faster.
Some students are paid stipends to cover the basic costs of living during their degrees; however, these funds are below what Canada has set as its minimum wage, and do not adequately cover the cost of living during their studies. Often students take on large amounts of debt to cover costs of living during their degrees. Students are already highly motivated to finish their degrees, start earning an adequate salary and pay off their loans. Further financial burden will not offer any additional motivation to finish and may be detrimental in regards to access to education for many students.
In 2010, the Faculty of Graduate Studies released a report entitled “Report of the Task Force on Time-to-Completion.” This report lists many factors as to why University of Manitoba graduate students are taking longer, including secondary jobs to support their education costs, low funding, advisor or committee difficulties, research or research equipment difficulties, publication requirements, and the demographics of graduate students (additional jobs, married, have children or elderly to support, English as a second language). We believe the drastic fee increase will force students to increase work outside of their graduate studies and will cause additional stress in other areas that will further prevent them from completing their studies in a timely manner.
2. We do not agree that increasing tuition fees will make the University of Manitoba more attractive to top students.
Currently, top students receive funding from external sources, such as the national Tri-council Agencies (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC).These awards are highly competitive and awardees are nationally/internationally regarded as high-quality graduate students. University awards are less regarded in the research community, often pay students significantly less than these national awards, and generally go to students who could not receive Tri-council funding. Therefore, the FGS’ argument to offer a larger number of these less desirable awards could not attract high quality students as they say.
As well, increasing tuition fees will act as a pay cut for Tri-council students and will deter pre-funded students from choosing to do their studies at the University of Manitoba. Keeping tuition fees down will allow top students to retain their stipends and will make the University of Manitoba a more attractive option for these individuals.
3. There is no specific rationale for the magnitude of the increase or how it will be allocated.
Simply, the FGS proposal numbers do not add up. They appear to be arbitrarily increased to match tuition fees of other U15 schools. With such an extreme tuition increase of 330% in such a short period of time, we feel it is the responsibility of FGS to convince the student body that their services will be drastically improved in an equally timely manner before this increase can occur. Our survey data shows that graduate students are not convinced this hike will translate to better services.
With such a large diversity of student support required among departments, this one-size fits all tuition hike, rather than a needs-based strategy, appears short sighted and poorly planned. We feel that this current strategy proposed by the FGS will likely be taking funds from students who need financial support to give to a student who may not require it. As well, the effects of this tuition increase onInternational students (comprising 25% of the graduate student population) and Part-Time students are not mentioned at all within their proposal.
4. Proposal does not explore other funding options other than an increase in tuition.
We believe there are other funding streams that should be explored before placing the entire burden of program funding on students. These options include the following: other student fees we pay outside of continuing fees (ancillary fees), donor funding the university receives and government/industry funding and grants.
As well, students are charged additional fees, including a library fee, a registration fee, a Student Organization fee, a Student Services fee, a Tech Fee, and the optional Health and Dental Plan fees. Although the University/Faculty of Graduate Studies does not directly see these fees, the student does and so these fees must be taken into account when discussing an increase in tuition.
5. We do not agree with the FGS that increased tuition will help students “make money”
Both within the 2010 report and within the current proposal there is a misleading statement that states that using the federal tax credit full-time students “make money.” At best, students receive about 15% of that tax credit back; however, in order to use that credit, we must be making taxable money. Full-time student stipends are not taxed, which means that we cannot use that tax credit, unless we have a secondary job or after we graduate. So for most of us, we will not see that credit while we are still paying tuition when it is most needed.