University of Victoria Vice-President Academic Jamie Cassels wrote to the Victoria Times-Colonist to dispute facts presented by the Education Shouldn't be a Debt Sentence campaign. The CFS-BC response is below.

A Sept. 12 letter stated: "Over the past decade, our Liberal government has more than doubled tuition at B.C. institutions. and starved universities and colleges of funding needed to compete in a global economy." The following day it was reported that an average B.C. university student graduates with $27,000 in debt, according to the Canadian Federation of Students.

As the vice-president academic at the University of Victoria during the decade referred to, I have a different understanding of the facts.

Government does not set tuition fees. They are set by university boards of governors, subject to maximum limits set by government. Over the past decade, B.C. tuition fees were indeed increased to bring them into line with fees across the country, but have increased by only two per cent per year for the past four years.

During this same decade, the government did not starve the universities, but paid its share as well, by increasing direct funding to universities by many hundreds of millions of dollars.

The increased funding from tuition and grants has been used to create new programs and courses, to accommodate much higher student enrolments, to provide financial support for students in need and to provide higher salaries for faculty in a competitive labour market.

Average student debt is not $27,000. According to the most recent data, about half of B.C. university students graduate with no debt at all. The median debt for the remaining half is $20,000.

During the recession, public funding for universities has been frozen at 2010 levels. And there are students with very large and unsustainable debt loads. Social and economic development depends upon a strong education system, and it is particularly important that initiatives be developed to enhance educational opportunities for less advantaged members of society.

But it seems wrong to say that the B.C. government, and the taxpayers who foot the bill, have not supported higher education, and the reported statistic on student debt is simply incorrect. Public discussion and good policy should be based on accurate facts.

Jamie Cassels, Faculty of Law University of Victoria

CFS-BC Replies 

In a letter to the editor on September 21, UVic vice-president academic Jamie Cassels challenged figures presented by students to illustrate the massive student debt problem in British Columbia.

Unfortunately, in Mr. Cassels’ haste to defend the government, he neglected to cite a single reference for his factum. On the other hand, we are happy to provide the well-established sources for our figures:

1. Average student debt in BC is $26,738 (Price of Knowledge by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, 2009). Given that tuition fees have increased since 2009 and BC has eliminated its student grants program, we do not expect this figure to decline. This figure doesn’t account for private debt (credit cards, lines of credit, family loans), making the true figure substantially higher.

2. The BC government regulates tuition fees. In the absence of regulation between 2002 and 2005, tuition fees doubled. That the individual institutions (including Mr. Cassels’) behaved so irresponsibly in an unregulated environment is an embarrassment, but it does not take the burden of ultimate responsibility away from the BC Liberal government.

3. Per student funding in BC is lower today than in 2001 (BC Budgets; Confederation of University Faculty Associations-BC). This decline is likely due in part to the addition of (unfunded) spaces over the last decade, but the fact remains: our institutions are being asked to do more with less during a time when a most new jobs require post-secondary graduates.

These facts are no doubt what leads British Columbians to conclude that tuition fees and student debt must be reduced. In an Ipsos poll commissioned by the Federation of Post-secondary Educators of BC last month, well over 80% of respondents supported a freeze or reduction in tuition fees.