University tuition fees have skyrocketed in Canada over the past 40 years and students must work two, three and even six times as much to afford to pay for them, according to a new study. The public policy think tank, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives compiled data based on numbers from the government agency, Statistics Canada.
Tuition fees vary dramatically across the country with the two provinces of Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador offering the lowest. The province of Ontario requires the greatest amount of minimum-wage work to pay the average tuition fee, going from 260 hours in 1975 to 708 hours four decades later.
Tuition “sticker shock” deters students
There wasn’t much of a difference forty years ago in the fees for studying medicine, law and dentistry compared to fees for agriculture, arts and general science. But today the difference can be staggering, says Armine Yalnizyan, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “Today there is a huge sticker shock if you decide to go into those professional undergraduate degrees. And that really makes some people think twice about whether they can afford to do it which is, I think, the wrong thing for us to be doing.”
As an example, a dentistry student would have had to work 286 hours at a minimum-wage job in 1975 to afford the tuition fee then of $664.
In 2013, that same student had to labour for 1,711 hours to pay annual tuition costs of $17,324.
Canada lagging in support for education
Developing countries are investing in education says Yalnizyan. They understand that “the biggest raw material they have in growing their economy are their people. And a knowledge-based society requires a serious investment in the knowledge base of individuals.” Unless Canada can do the same it risks becoming a backwater, she says.
The Canadian government has rolled back its support for universities. Yalnizyan says it has to stop thinking oil is its biggest resource and understand that people are. She calls on the federal and provincial governments to increase support for universities and to reduce tuition fees for students.
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