The University of Toronto’s Business Board has proposed a tuition fee schedule that will include an average fee increase of 4.31 per cent for domestic students and 6 per cent increase for international students. The fee increases are part of the Business Board’s plan to balance the budget for the upcoming years.

After missing out on a large endowment of $62 million last year, the Business Board is taking major steps to plan out projects for the next several years including updating certain student services and strengthening research infrastructure.

Although many are happy about the plans to balance the budget and recuperate from the previous losses, others are opposed to the proposed solution of tuition fee hikes. Adam Awad, the incoming president of the University of Toronto Students’ Union, has been a vocal opponent of the imminent tuition hikes.

“High tuition fees are absolutely a roadblock for students, particularly in Ontario where we have the highest, on average, fees in the country,” he said. “Tuition fee increases make education less accessible for people. There seems to be a disconnect between the perspectives of decision-makers, both in universities and in government, and the realities of students that leads to a deep misunderstanding of the challenges that we face.”

Julius Grey, a well-known Montreal lawyer and former McGill law professor, also commented on the situation during a panel discussion last week on alternatives to tuition fee hikes. He expressed concern with the developments at the University of Toronto and urged Quebec students to stand up for themselves.

“I think it’s a very serious and terrible thing that’s happening in Toronto,” Grey said. “It’s a shocking development, and everyone at McGill should be protesting against [this] program, which is going [to create] a new class system.”

Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan, the Students’ Society vice-president external, pointed out that tuition laws and policies differ between provinces, though he called rising tuition a trend that is “already very obvious throughout Canada.” He also criticized the administration and government for their stances on tuition increases.

“There’s so much rhetoric that goes on coming from the McGill administration and the Quebec government,” Ronderos-Morgan said. “According to them, so long as there is an allocation of the fee hike that goes toward student aid, it’s actually not affecting accessibility.”

Ronderos-Morgan cited a study conducted by the Ministry of Education in 2007, which found that tuition hikes would lead to lower enrolment in universities, especially among lower and lower-middle class students.

Awad also commented on the policy makers and their role in these discussions.

“I sometimes wonder if decision-makers recognize that the times have changed quite substantially since many of them were in school,” Awad said. “Last year, when the university was voting to increase tuition fees, the provost said that the increase was only $250 and that it really wasn’t unmanageable for students. For many, $250 represents the amount of money they spend on food in a month.”

Both Awad and Ronderos-Morgan believe that tuition fee hikes are not the only answer to many universities’ yawning budget deficits.

“Research is being done by other student associations and there are a lot of alternative proposals that exist and are around, but they are not being considered by the government,” said Ronderos-Morgan. “And frankly, they’re not being considered by governments around Canada.”

“I don’t think that increases are inevitable if there is adequate funding coming from the province,” added Awad. “There is, of course, the issue of how universities prioritize their spending internally, which is largely a matter of shifting limited resources within a starved institution.”