EDMONTON – The provincial government announced Thursday that it will be freezing tuition rates for Alberta’s post-secondary students this fall.
“We’ve been very clear that we will not be balancing the budget on the backs of students,” Premier Alison Redford said in a statement. “Getting a post-secondary education is a truly wonderful investment and we want to make sure that investment remains affordable for families and students.”
The decision means students will pay the same tuition for the 2013-14 academic year as they did in 2012-13.
The freeze comes just after colleges, universities and institutes were handed a substantial cut in funding in the March 7 provincial budget, losing $147 million from a base grant of $2 billion while other departments saw funding frozen.
Under provincial rules, tuition is supposed to rise each year at the annual rate of inflation. This year’s increase of 2.15 per cent will be paid by the province so post-secondary schools do not have to make up the shortfall in revenue.
“No tuition increases for students has been government’s expectation all along,” deputy premier and Minister of Enterprise and Advanced Education Thomas Lukaszuk said in a statement. “Post-secondary institutions under the Campus Alberta umbrella need to examine how to administer their schools differently so more dollars find their way into classrooms, into curriculum development, into programming and into making sure we continue to have leading, competitive education for our over 237,000 students and 31,000 apprentices.”
Lukaszuk said he and ministry officials will hold regular quarterly meetings with student groups, school presidents and presidents and board chairs.
More to come …
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