Tuition fees up 27% at U of T
CMAJ 2000;162(13):1861
| See also: | No tuition fees for U of T residents |
The bad news for students entering medical school at the University of Toronto this year is that their tuition fees are rising by 27%. The good news, says Dean David Naylor, is that further large increases are "extremely unlikely." The U of T now has the highest fees in Canada, although this may change as other schools announce increases this summer.
New medical students at the U of T will pay $14 000 in tuition fees this year, up from $11 000 in 1999; students already registered in the program will face a 5% increase.
Naylor says the reasons for the increases are simple. "Ontario's provincial government has been balancing its budget, and it has taken a very tough line on university funding. This means that more of the costs of professional programs must be borne by students. As well, the block-funding formula for universities includes only partial allowances for differences in program costs. This means that, compared with a large lecture-based course in the humanities or social sciences, small professional programs have high per-student costs."
Naylor added that, paradoxically, universities that are successful in winning research awards — as the U of T is — face a further funding squeeze because overhead costs are not included in the awards. "This is a further indirect funding pressure," he added. "All of these forces had an impact on our tuition decision."
In 1999, tuition fees at Canada's 16 medical schools ranged from a low of $2452 at the University of Montreal to a high of $12 600 at McMaster University. Tara Mastracci, president of the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, says medical students are "gravely concerned" about tuition fee trends. "Although the University of Toronto is the most recent increase, similar decisions are being made from Dalhousie to UBC," she said. "The most recent increase in Toronto has come in complete ignorance of an outcry for a need to evaluate the effect that rising tuition has on the demographics of the physician population. For many young Canadians, it is impossible to even contemplate an education that would incur such high debts, and as a result the pool of talented students who would be physicians is getting shallower."
Naylor acknowledges that the U of T is concerned about rising fees, but says data about their impact are conflicting and inclusive. "On the preventive front, we are continuing to increase the number and level of our bursaries and interest-free loans. Our faculty's commitment is simple: once accepted, no students should ever have to leave any of our programs as a result of personal financial problems." — Patrick Sullivan, CMAJ
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