Dalhousie University’s Board of Governors voted Tuesday to approve changes to student tuition and fees for 2016-17 as recommended in late March by the university’s Budget Advisory Committee (BAC).
The changes include a 3 per cent general tuition increase across all programs as well as additional tuition adjustments to undergraduate courses in Engineering, Pharmacy and the Faculty of Agriculture (Truro). The three additional adjustments were all reduced from initial recommendations shared with the Dal community in February.
Dalhousie’s Board of Governors votes on tuition/fees each April, prior to approving the overall operating budget at its June meeting.
"We considered all options when preparing our final budget plan and, with the input of students, faculty, staff and groups across the university, have produced a plan that includes tuition increases and faculty/unit budget decreases to balance Dalhousie’s operating budget for 2016/17,” says Carolyn Watters, provost and vice-president academic and chair of the BAC.
Read more: Budget Advisory Committee Final Operating Budget Plan (March 28)
Several dozen students attended the meeting to voice their opposition to the tuition increases. Prior to the tuition vote, attendees in the gallery began causing a disruption that made it impossible for the Board to continue its agenda. After multiple requests from the Board chair for the disruption to cease, the Board relocated its meeting into another space on campus, allowing the meeting to proceed.
Dalhousie’s Board of Governors meetings are open to the public. However, the Board’s bylaws state that persons can be excluded from Board meetings for improper conduct.
“We welcome the presence of students, community members and others at our meetings, and it’s disappointing that we had to exclude anyone from our public agenda,” says Lawrence Stordy, chair of the Board of Governors. “However, as we made clear to all in attendance at the start, it is still a meeting, one with an agenda to complete. When it became clear that attendees were determined to disrupt the meeting and not allow our work to continue, we had no choice but to relocate the meeting to complete our agenda.”
Stordy says the Board remains committed to an open and transparent budget process, as evidenced by the work of the university’s Budget Advisory Committee and its public consultations and recommendations.
“Dalhousie has one of the most open processes for determining tuition and fees of any university in our region,” says Stordy. “Hundreds of students turned out to share their thoughts, ideas, concerns as part of the Budget Advisory Committee’s consultations, with more sharing feedback via email and a student survey.
“Ultimately, the Board has a responsibility to balance the university budget, managing both a challenging funding environment and the need to continue to support strong programs, student experiences and research. And tuition revenue is an important part of that equation.”
Revised tuition adjustments
Other universities in Nova Scotia have used the one-time tuition adjustment authorized by the provincial government to implement across-the-board fee increases beyond the standard 3 per cent cap. In contrast, Dalhousie has chosen to only implement additional tuition adjustments in three program areas, impacting approximately 15 per cent of students based on current enrolment. These programs were chosen as their current tuition rates are below the national average for comparable programs at other institutions.
These additional tuition adjustments for undergrad courses in Engineering, Pharmacy and the Faculty of Agriculture were revised from the initial recommendations — changes reported in Dal News on March 28. The changes came through the university’s budget consultation process, which included open in-person sessions across all four Dal campuses in February/March and solicited additional feedback from students and other stakeholders.
The revised additional tuition adjustments, which will be phased in over thre years, are:
- Engineering: 3.3 per cent per year for three years (down from 5 per cent in the initial recommendations)
- Pharmacy: 4 per cent per year for three years (down from 5 per cent)
- Agriculture: 5.8 per cent per year for three years (down from 6.3 per cent)
Additionally, the Faculty of Agriculture will be providing a new bursary for students currently enrolled in Agriculture for the next three years. The bursary will reduce the impact of the additional tuition adjustment for those students to 3.4 per cent, more in line with the adjustments in Engineering and Pharmacy.
Half of the increased tuition revenue from the adjustments in in Engineering and Pharmacy will be earmarked for priority investments in those Faculties over the phase-in period so students see direct benefits. All increased tuition revenue in Agriculture goes directly into the Faculty of Agriculture/Agricultural Campus budget, which is funded separately from the rest of Dalhousie’s operating budget.
Additional fee changes
At Tuesday’s meeting, the Board also approved 3 per cent inflationary increases to the Facilities Renewal Fee, Student Services fee, and residence rates and meal plan fees.
Additionally, the Board signed off on three new student fees as approved by students in March’s DSU elections: a new fee of $0.35 per semester for full-time students ($0.25 for part-time) for the Get REAL society and its efforts to support acceptance, diversity and inclusivity through the unlearning of discriminatory language; an increase of $0.25 per semester for full-time students to the fee for World University Services Canada (WUCS) in supporting refugee students to study at Dal; and an increase of $1.49 per semester for full-time students ($0.73 for part-time) to the Dalhousie Agricultural Student Association fee for students on the Agricultural Campus.
Prior to the relocation of the meeting, Provost Watters gave a short presentation on the BAC’s Final Operating Budget Plan for 2016-17. Like universities across Canada, Dalhousie faces both constrained revenues — 90 per cent of which, come from the provincial operating grant and tuition revenue — and rising set costs in areas such as faculty/staff compensation and utilities. In addition to tuition increases, the BAC plan calls for a 2.5 per cent reduction to Faculty/unit budgets to balance the university operating budget.
The overall operating budget will be voted on at June’s Board meeting.