The University of Alberta (U of A) plans to increase its tuition in order to pay for a $59 million campus improvement budget shortfall, reported The Gateway.

U of A President Indira Samarasekera said that the university has targeted three measures that will be considered in a balanced approach: increase revenues from students, achieve administrative and program efficiencies, and moderate the rate of increase in faculty and staff salary and benefit costs. Both Arts and Science faculties will be relatively unaffected, while the Faculty of Pharmacy will be hit hard by a tuition increase of 66 per cent.

However, the Canadian Price Index (CPI), a monthly measurement of changes in consumer prices in Canada, is putting a damper on this process, as it is tied to tuition. CPI maintains low changes to tuition. To get around CPI caps, the university needs to convince the provincial government that the tuition levels were too low when CPI was originally tied to tuition.