High tuition fees causing BC students to work longer hours: study
Posted April 15, 2014 5:15 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The days of paying for university tuition with a summer job are over, according to a left-leaning think tank.
A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study is suggesting high fees are pushing BC students to work three times as many hours as previous generations did to pay for school.
Jenelle Davies with the Canadian Federation of Students is not shocked by the findings.
It found that in 1975, students only needed to put in 184 hours of full-time minimum wage work to pay for a full year of tuition fees.
This year, a student would have to work 552 hours.
“That doesn’t include books, it doesn’t include your living expenses, or other expenses along the way,” she says.
She adds a major problem is that the student loan interest rate is prime plus two-and-a-half per cent. “Usually it floats around five to 5.5 per cent which is actually more than a mortgage.”
Newfoundland and Labrador has the lowest tuition fees in Canada and, as a result, the report says students there have to work the fewest number of hours to pay tuition fees.
“BC could benefit from following the lead of Newfoundland and Labrador by reducing and freezing tuition fees and increasing funding for colleges and universities,” Davies adds.
