Kenny Sharpe
The Muse (Memorial
University of Newfoundland)
ST. JOHN’S (CUP) — “If I am from this province, it does not make any sense if I am taking first-year English and I am paying $255 for the course and then somebody sitting along side of me, but [who] happens to be from Zimbabwe, is paying $800 for the same course,” said Daniel Smith.
Smith, chairperson for the Canadian Federation of Students-Newfoundland and Labrador, said the newest campaign that his organization is working on involves calling for a reduction in tuition fees for both domestic and international students.
“[In] the campaign we have coming up – Fund the Future – we are calling for a reduction in tuition fees […] for all students,” said Smith. “We don’t see it as a domestic or an international issue. We need to have a parity system.”
International tuition fees across the country are comparably higher to what a domestic student pays for post-secondary education.
According to Statistics Canada, for the 2010-2011 academic year, undergraduate students can expect to pay $16,768 per year for their education. That’s more than three times as much as what Canadians students can expect to pay: $5,138.
“Our brothers and sisters across the country are facing yearly tuition fee increases by five and ten percent,” said Smith. “You could start doing your degree and then in the last year, be paying fifteen or twenty percent more than you were paying when you started out. How do you budget for that?”
Smith said there is a myth out there, that insinuates that because international students do not pay taxes it means they have to pay more for tuition, but Smith said he doesn’t buy it.
“For every international student here on campus, where they work they pay taxes, where they buy groceries they pay taxes. They pay into the tax system.”
Sahib Khorana, Memorial University students’ union international students representative, said once international currencies are converted to Canadian dollars, the cost of students’ education is often more than their parents’ yearly salary.
Khorana said they are still subject to the same expensive books and apartment rental costs that their domestic counterparts pay and said she doesn’t understand what accounts for the difference in tuition fees.
“On the one hand, Newfoundland and Labrador is promoting recruitment of international students, but on the other, they are still being charged three times the fees,” said Khorana in an email.
“As international students, we have additional living and travel expenses which are usually not required for Canadian students, putting the international student at an even further disadvantage.”
“Not only is it time that the international student fees be changed and brought more in par with Canadian student fees but also […] that additional financial support be provided,” she said.
“The hypocrisy is intolerable and I for one do not support it.”
