Mount Allison has released its budget for next year, and it includes a 3% hike in tuition and residence fees. Annual tuition for the next academic year will be $9,440 for Canadian students, and $19,040 for international students.
CHMA spoke with newly elected Mount Allison students’ union president Charlie Burke, to get her take on the new budget.
Burke is “disheartened” to see the tuition hike, but also appreciative of some items in the budget. “Financial aid is getting quite a big increase of over $700,000, and we’ve got some of our budget advocacy asks,” says Burke. “But overall, I think we’re still quite concerned about how tuition is going to affect students.”
The budget includes a 14% increase in funding for student financial aid. In a news release, Mount Allison says funding has also been allocated for key student services areas including international recruitment, sexual violence response and prevention, and diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus.
“One of our asks was higher compensation for RAs and assistant dons in residence,” says Burke, “and those were increased by $1,000, which was really great to see, because that’s something that we’ve been advocating for a very long time.”
“And we saw an investment into EDI [equity, diversity and inclusion], for the Black Student Advisor position. So that position now is year round, and fully funded by the university. And as well, they’re also investing some of that money into sexual violence prevention.”
The 2021-2022 budget includes two additional positions in tenured faculty. Mount Allison hit a ten year low in the number of tenured faculty at the school last year, with 121 professors tenured or on tenure track. In 2012, there were 130 such positions.
The operating budget includes $52.3 million in expenses, and slightly less in revenues, leaving a $886,000 deficit. The school also planned for a deficit in its last budget, which had a $1.1 million gap between expenses and revenues.
“I would prefer to see the university figure out a little bit more of a long term plan as to how to make up that deficit without having to increase tuition by so much,” says Burke, “especially for international students who are being hit much harder in this tuition increase than domestic students, because they already pay so much.”
“There was a few years where there was no tuition increases,” says Burke. “And now we’ve just been hit with these more aggressive increases year after year.”
“When a student signs up for university, they come in expecting the tuition to maybe increase by inflation every year,” says Burke. But as a fourth year student Burke says she’s seen an over 10% increase since she started.
And with a 5 cent (less than half a percent) increase in minimum wage this year by the provincial government, student incomes will have trouble keeping up with increases in tuition, residence rooms, and meal plans.
“It is horrible to see the provincial government, year after year, just really not do students justice. I think just as much as I’m disappointed to see Mount Allison raise tuition, I’m even more disappointed to see the province of New Brunswick doing nothing to support students.,” says Burke.