Tuition Blues

September means back to school and another round of school fees, either parents paying for items on an ever increasing list of required materials (materials once provided by the schools themselves), or post-secondary students trying to come up with scratch for tuition. Here in Alberta, tuition has been on the rise since the early 1990s, and after fifteen years finally appears to to be slowing, as the University of Calgary actually lowered tuition by 0.2%. Also, the province no longer ranks in first place as the province with the highest tuition rate, that honour goes to Nova Scotia. However, what is not mentioned, is that with the lowest minimum wage and tightest rental market, the University of Calgary is still one of the most expensive universities for out of town students to attend. It is not unusual for undergraduates earning $8 - $10/ hr to have to pay for a $1000/month one bedroom apartment. Many are still working two jobs on top of their full-time studies, despite Calgary's booming labour market.

The expense of education has hidden consequences for the U of C, which expresses it's anger again this year at the MacLean's University Rankings. Part of the criteria that MacLean's uses is the impression that a university's graduates have in the workplace. University of Calgary students, working multiple jobs, tend to be over-worked, sleep-deprived, and under-perform while actually in university, resulting in lower GPAs on transcipt records, another MacLean's measure of quality.

**links to follow**