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By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

student debt in alberta one of highest

NDP promises tuition freeze, but public interest group says it isn’t enough

Apr 8, 2023 | 1:45 PM

The NDP say they’ll freeze post-secondary tuition if elected this May, but one organization believes their promise doesn’t go far enough.

This week, the Official Opposition announced it would freeze tuition and reverse the latest round of hikes, meaning they’d stay at 2022-23 levels, the party says.

They’d also cap future increases, saving nearly 300,000 Alberta students a collective $102 million this year, the NDP estimates.

“Post-secondary education is the key to unlocking a better life,” NDP Leader Rachel Notley said. “Whether you’re a young person starting a career, or a not-so-young person changing careers, post-secondary provides that opportunity to increase your income and pursue your dreams.”

Notley also committed to a full review of post-secondary funding and tuition, promising to include students.

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They claim UCP cuts to post-secondary have caused canceled programs, closures, staff layoffs and steep tuition hikes.

In 2019, tuition rose 33 per cent at the University of Calgary, the students’ union there points out.

But Public Interest Alberta (PIA) says the NDP’s promises on this matter don’t fully address the situation.

“We need to dream bigger,” the organization says, admitting that any announcement of a reduction is welcome relief.

But Bradley Lafortune, PIA executive director, says students are really feeling the squeeze of a 20 per cent increase over the last few years, combined with record inflation.

“Students in Alberta graduate with some of the highest debt loads in the country and our participation rates are historically the lowest in the country,” says Lafortune. “In other places in the world, post-secondary is invested in as an integral and barrier-free public service and a major economic driver. Students aren’t expected to take out astronomical loans to cover tuition — loans that end up taking years or decades to pay off, kneecapping graduates’ abilities to buy homes, start businesses, or start a family.”

Lafortune says tangible relief for international students isn’t on the agenda until a long-term review of post-secondary education takes place.

“The way post-secondary institutions treat international students is abhorrent. We need to see major and immediate interventions to stop treating these students like cash cows to supplement the operational funding deficit dealt by the UCP,” he says.

“These students are particularly vulnerable to the multiple crises we’re facing. For example, the Campus Food Bank at the University of Alberta is experiencing record-breaking numbers of requests for their services and estimate that 70 per cent of their clients are international students.”

PIA is advocating for the following changes:

• Large-scale and long-term reinvestment in post-secondary institutions: both increasing operating funding and student bursary/grant funding
• Strictly regulating increases to tuition and mandatory non-instructional fees
• End the systemic practice of precarious employment for faculty, librarians, academic staff, and support staff at post-secondary institutions to improve conditions for students in their research and education
• Restoring the support staff levels to pre-UCP levels in order to increase student services, research capabilities, and teaching capacities at our institutions
• Increasing provincial research funding, including creating a provincial research funding body for graduate students to increase Albertan labs/project and commercial and non-commercial research capacity while setting up our graduate students for success
• Collaborating with partners to explore a tuition-free model of post-secondary education, in order to help Alberta adapt to a fast-changing global economy and address accessibility challenges (especially for underrepresented groups)
• Increasing the program spaces in our universities and colleges to accommodate the increased population of high school students that will be entering our system in a few years
• Provide subsidized, high-speed internet to all regions of the province so students can participate in distance learning and regular programming

Alberta’s Budget 2023, announced end of February, included a two per cent cap on future tuition increases.

Tuition at Red Deer Polytechnic was scheduled to increase seven per cent last fall. It also went up in 2021.

“We don’t even see conversations about tuition rollbacks, let alone big ideas like tuition-free post-secondary – why not?” asks Lafortune. “It happens all over the world. Why not here?”

The UCP removed the tuition freeze when they were elected in spring 2019, after the NDP had frozen it for their four years in power.