At Carleton University on Sept. 30, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that the current post-secondary tuition freeze will soon be lifted.
He added that the provincial government intends to create more grants and make additional forms of funding available.
Although the end of the freeze will likely mean higher tuition fees, it was unreasonable to hope the freeze would last forever. A tuition freeze is not a long-term way to keep university accessible. One long-term solution is to increase student assistance and funding, which the provincial government has pledged to do.
It simply isn’t feasible to expect tuition to remain the same while the standard of living continues to rise. At some point, a balance must be struck.
While Queen’s Arts and Science students face an increase in tuition, engineering and Commerce students as well as international students have faced incremental tuition hikes for quite some time. At Queen’s, for tuition alone, international students in Arts and Science pay over $15,000.
As much as we may not like it, tuition will have to increase to meet the cost of living.
We hope, however, that the provincial government will implement a better financial assistance program to make funding more readily available to students.
That way, tuition fees can rise with the cost of living without impeding accessibility rather than staying frozen and giving students a nasty shock a few years down the line.
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