by Christine McLaren
News Staff

International students, who already pay over four times more per credit than their domestic counterparts, can look forward to even higher tuition starting this summer as the University sent international students notification of the change last week.

The 3.05 per cent increase is part of a resolution approved by the UBC Board of Governors (BoG) on September 24, 2001 as an “annual fee adjustment to reflect changes in the UBC education price index,” as stated in the letter addressed to all international students affected by the increase.

Yet, according to Don Wehrung, although this may seem like a new installment, international student tuition fees have a decade-long history of hikes. Wehrung, who is the executive director of International Student Recruitment and a professor at the Sauder School of Business, acts as a consultant on tuition rates to UBC’s VP Students and various faculties. The history of tuition hikes for international students, Wehrung said, began when international and domestic students first became differentiated in terms of subsidisation and tuition fees in 1996.

“Prior to this time, international students were counted as regular undergrad students and received money in subsidisation from the provincial government. Therefore, funding of international students was being paid by BC taxpayers,” explained Wehrung.

He went on to explain how this made it very difficult for international students to be accepted into the university, as it was only possible at the time if they could prove themselves more worthy of a position than any domestic student. By taking away government subsidies from international students, it effectively leveled the playing field for international students to come to UBC.

“They no longer had to be better than a Canadian student. They still had to be up to par, but not better,” explained Wehrung, who added that the removal of subsidisation proved to be an effective way of internationalising the university- going from 450 international students in 1996 to 2800 in 2006.

Over the next few years there were no increases to any tuition fees, until in 2001 the BoG agreed to a 12 per cent increase for international students, to make up for the cost of living increases over the past few years.

“The small yearly increases we are seeing now are to avoid a large increase such as that in 2001 all at once. The cost of living goes up every year, and we need to account for that,” said Wehrung. He also explained how the provincial government puts a restriction on how high the university can raise cost of living fees for domestic students, which currently sits at two per cent.

In regards to the Decemberapproved hike, the Alma Mater Society (AMS) is not pleased with the actions of the BoG. “The AMS didn’t hear anything about the hike until after it was approved,” explained Kevin Keystone, AMS president, “and we’re unimpressed with that.”

He also added, “the AMS does not necessarily oppose tuition increases due to inflation. That being said, we are also aware that international fees have been hiked by several thousand dollars in the last few years.”

Keystone feels that high tuition rates already pose a significant encumbrance to international students, and suggests that although the International Student Initiative (ISI) already puts forward a percentage of international student tuition toward financial aid programs, more scholarships and bursaries are needed to help subsidise the costs. “We’re disappointed,” he said.

“We’re disappointed that we weren’t informed, we’re disappointed that it’s becoming a burden on students, and we’re disappointed that we aren’t seeing more scholarships and bursaries despite the hikes. If the university is serious about its mission to internationalise UBC, they need to start thinking of creative ways to lessen the burden.”

He also mentioned the $650,000 recently taken from the ISI reserve as part of the 2007/2008 budget cuts to help rid the university of its $36 million deficit, and staked it as “another example of international students being targeted.”

Many international students are as unhappy as Keystone about the hikes in tuition, both recently and in the past.

“It seems pretty unfair that they’re trying to attract international students, but then constantly raising the fees,” said Tanner Welsh, a second-year Arts student from Berkley, California. He mentioned that although there are scholarships available, they’re very elite and difficult to get, and also not always based entirely on need. “I wish they had more scholarships to kids from other countries too, especially those not as wealthy as the United States, for example. I would feel better about the hikes in that case.”

Other students wonder about the future of UBC’s international community at the rate things are going. Although Wehrung claims that the BoG is “well aware not to put tuition rates so high as to inhibit international students’ ability to come,” some students remain skeptical.

“If the cost of living keeps going up, so will the fees,” said Nives Bogad, first-year Arts student from Vienna, Austria. “The tuition prices are one of the attractions of Canadian universities for us compared to American ones, but if this continues it doesn’t seem like there will be that competition.” She added that although it’s frustrating, she was aware that the hikes were inevitable upon entering the university.

“All I want to know is: when is it going to stop?”