All Posts Tagged With: "University of Manitoba"

UManitoba could see second support staff strike in a little over three years

There appears to be no shortage of labour unrest at the University of Manitoba, where support staff may have their second strike in three years.

U of M support staff represented by Canadian Auto Workers Local 3007 have voted 87 per cent in favour of giving the union a strike mandate. The CAW  represents 450  workers, including caretakers, food service workers, groundskeepers, and engineering and skilled-trades people. A strike date has not been set, as negotiations with the university are still on going and monetary issues still need to be discussed.

This seems unsurprising in a year characterized by unpleasant bargaining between the university and its unions. Last summer the administration locked out security staff when negotiations became deadlocked. Faculty members also saw a relatively tiny pay increase when they ratified their collective agreement in late October. University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA) president Cameron Morrill told the Winnipeg Free Press the small raise was just a sign of the times, after the university was faced with a $36.4 million budget shortfall for 2010.

A support staff strike may not have the potential of a faculty strike to effectively shut down the university, but the implications should still be taken just as seriously. When support staff went on strike in 2007 for over a week, it limited access to the university and forced fall convocation to be held off campus. It also left non-unionized members filling the jobs left by picketing union members, which is not an easy task with a university of almost 28, 000 students. For example, 14 management staff and 30 students workers were left to do the work of all the university’s food services. This caused frequent long lines at student union operated restaurants and food supplies were quick run out.

Not having happy support staff is more than a simple vexation for those on campus. It impedes the university’s ability to function properly. Hopefully CAW bargaining committee chair Frank Wright’s prediction that a strike will likely not be necessary is correct, and the problems that cropped up in 2007 are not something students and staff will have to contend with.

Graduate Students’ Association endorses suspension of Gabor Lukacs

The University of Manitoba Graduate Students’ Association has come out in support of the decision to suspend math professor Gabor Lukacs. Lukacs was suspended for three months without pay after he filed an application in Manitoba court to reverse a decision by John Doering, Dean of Graduate Studies, to waive a comprehensive exam requirement for a PhD student. After he filed his court papers, the university suspended him on the official grounds that he violated the students’ privacy. The student, whose name is protected by a publication ban, is said to suffer from “extreme exam anxiety.”

In a recent letter distributed to various media outlets, including Maclean’s, Meaghan Labine, president of the Graduate Students’ Association endorsed the decision to suspend Lukacs.

Graduate students value the protection and privacy of their personal information. The UMGSA supports the protection of all students’ personal and private information that is required by law. The University of Manitoba’s response in dealing with this breach of confidentiality reflects the university’s commitment to ensuring the confidentiality of a student’s personal information. Consequently, to the extent that the university’s decision to suspend its faculty member may have been based on the unauthorized disclosure of personal health information, the UMGSA feels this Human Resources decision was justified.

Although Labine does not address the specific circumstances surrounding the waiving of the exam requirement for the student, she criticizes the characterization of the U of M as a “PhD mill” and implications that the university has been granting “compassionate degrees.” She writes: “It has been our collective experience that the University of Manitoba adheres to regulated standards for academic achievement within all disciplines ensuring that program requirements and achievements fulfill degree requirements and equifinality.”

The GSA letter advances a different position than the University of Manitoba Faculty Association, who is supporting Lukacs by grieving his suspension. “I don’t know if its an automatic thing that we do, but it’s such a harsh thing that we usually try to find some other way to resolve the issue aside from some sort of formal discipline,” Cameron Morrill, UMFA president told the Manitoban.

In a letter published by the Winnipeg Free Press, Morrill also questioned the university’s definition of reasonable accommodation when exam anxiety is concerned.

In cases where a diagnosis of exam anxiety means that the usual methods of examination do not provide a fair evaluation of a student’s abilities, reasonable accommodation routinely takes the form of allowing the student additional time or other special conditions under which to take the exam. Reasonable accommodation does not mean that the student does not have to demonstrate the competencies required by the degree.

Similarly, some 86 mathematicians from around the world have issued a letter of protest addressed to the university administration against the decision to waive the exam requirement.

[A]s members of the mathematical community, we wish to express our deep concern about the repercussions this affair will have at the national and international levels. Indeed, given the current cohesiveness of the mathematical community, and the speed at which information now travels, the negative publicity your institution is receiving threatens to cast a shadow on all future mathematics degrees awarded by the University of Manitoba. In the current context of intense competition, many of your students will find it difficult to overcome such a handicap.

While Lukacs’ grievance against his suspension will not be heard until the spring, a hearing on his court application, where a judge is being asked to rule whether Doering, as an administrator, had the authority to waive PhD requirements, is scheduled for tomorrow January 20, 2011(Update: The hearing was originally scheduled for Nov 30th, but that has since changed). The university’s primary defense is that Lukacs has no standing.

Dr. Lukacs has no individual rights in law or equity that are at stake or in issue. He does not have a direct and personal interest in the alleged improper acts of Dr. Doering or the university. . . . Further, there is no evidence that he has suffered, or is likely to suffer, special damages peculiar to himself as a result of the accommodation afforded to [the student] by the university and any decision made by the university as a consequence of said accommodation.

Important questions still unanswered in the Lukacs affair.

Officials at the University of Manitoba have issued an official response in the controversial Gabor Lukacs case. Happily, the President’s section of the response includes a promise to review the university’s practices regarding how it will better handle similar cases in the future. This is welcome news and must be accounted a victory for Lukacs and his supporters.

But the defence provided by the Deans Jay Doering and Mark Whitmore does little to answer the serious concerns that have been raised about academic integrity in this case. Though the statement bristles with affront over media coverage of the matter, the Deans’ defence, read carefully, does little to refute the numerous concerns that have come up.

Related: A failing grade on transparency

For instance, the Deans admit that the mathematics department considers an A a passing grade on the comprehensive exam and that the student earned “slightly below” that grade. So what are we to conclude? That almost passing is the same as passing? Surely the examiners knew that they were giving a failing grade. If they thought it was close enough, they would have raised the grade in the first place. And what about the allegations that the student in question did not complete all the necessary graduate courses and that undergraduate courses were elevated in their place?

Next, the Deans confirm that the student’s documentation regarding severe exam anxiety was provided only after the two failures occurred. This point has raised many eyebrows among commentators who have suggested that surely a student with a disability should declare that disability beforehand. Moreover, if the exam anxiety was so debilitating, how did the student pass other exams, including the other comprehensives? Is there really no threat to academic integrity when students can claim they have a disability but only when they fail?

Then comes the strangest passage in their brief:

The graduate studies committee of the department of mathematics recommended a written alternative. Disability Services recommended the student be accommodated with an oral format.  The graduate studies committee indicated its preference for a waiver of the exam as opposed to an oral exam in this unique situation.

This math story does not add up. The department proposes an alternative written format (this is consistent with media reports that the student was offered more time). This accommodation is rejected and the disability office recommends an oral exam. Then the department counters with no exam at all? That strains credibility. I can see why the department would reject an oral exam, but why would they suddenly give up on the exam altogether? If they didn’t think the exam was necessary, why didn’t they propose the waiver in the first place?  Did they become so frustrated with the administration that they just gave up? Did someone jokingly say “An oral exam? We might as well give no exam at all! No, wait, I was just kidding . . . ” At the very least, this requires fuller explanation.

But even if for some reason the department did propose waiving the exam, it seems to me that it was incumbent upon the Dean to reject that proposal, because it was his job to defend the academic standards of the university. Not so, say the Deans because

Under the Manitoba Human Rights Code, the University was obligated to accommodate this proven, professionally-diagnosed disability.

The U of M has used this rhetorical trick before, claiming they are legally required to make accommodations when, in fact, they are only obligated to make reasonable accomodations. Dean Doering could have insisted that more time was a reasonable accommodation. Further, he could have pointed out that section 13 (1) of the Human Rights Code allows for some kinds of discrimination if the causes are “bona fide and reasonable.” Surely, a university has some right to discriminate against students who can’t show a mastery of the required subject matter.

The Deans then give a list of other achievements of the student, none of which, of course, are relevant, before turning on Gabor Lukacs. On one hand, they cite only one motive for Lukacs’ position, a desire to “have the student’s degree revoked,” making no mention of the idea that perhaps Lukacs is taking a stand on principle. They then point out that Lukacs was not directly involved in the student’s education at U of M, a point that only strengthens Lukacs’s position. Why would he protest the conferral of a degree upon a student he did not know or teach unless it was not about this student at all, but about upholding academic integrity?

And while we are on the subject of Lukacs, why was he given such harsh punishment? A three month suspension without pay? The maximum fine for a first offence of animal cruelty in Manitoba is $5000. Lukacs is being made to forgo something like three times that amount. How is that reasonable?

The Deans say it is now time to move forward. If they really mean it, they can start by reinstating professor Lukacs and paying him his back salary.

They are only making it worse.

John Danakas of the University of Manitoba has written to the Winnipeg Free Press to defend his university amid the growing storm over the suspension of math prof Gabor Lukacs. His defense, though, only further embarrasses the  U of M by employing the same flawed logic and the same disregard for academic regulations that got the university into this mess in the first place.

Danakas’ argument boils down to two claims:

1. The university is bound by law to make reasonable accomodations to those with medical disabilities, and since exam anxiety is recognized legally and medically as a disability, the university has to let some students forgo their exams. To do otherwise would be “irresponsible and unlawful.”

2. The “ultimate test” of a PhD candidate is the dissertation and its defence, so we should not be too concerned over whether a particular student passed any particular exam or passed any particular course.

Here’s what wrong with these arguments:

1. The obligation to make accommodation need not extend to waiving exams altogether or ignoring missing courses. The department was willing to allow the student more time — surely that is a reasonable accomodation. The Dean wanted to give the student an oral exam, but while I am not a mathematician, my sense of advanced math is that you cannot do it in your head and you cannot explain it without writing it down. Perhaps professional mathematicians out there can weigh in on this.

In short, Danakas invokes “reasonable accomodation” and then leaves out the “reasonable” part. Surely reasonable accomodation does not mean every possible accomodation.

2. Of course the thesis is the biggest part of any Canadian PhD program, but it is not for Danakas to say that the other requirements are unimportant, any more than it is for the Dean of Graduate studies to do so. The pre-dissertation work for the U of M PhD in math looks to me like it would take at least two years of full-time study. What will Danakas say to all those U of M Ph.D. students who, according to him, are wasting their time?

Danakas says that besides the dissertation, there are “a number factors that come into play” when determining whether one gets a doctorate or not. Wrong. There is no play of factors. This is not a branding meeting; it’s an academic degree. There are a series of requirements.

Which ones matter? Let me say it one more time.

IT IS NOT FOR HIM TO SAY.

Let me put it this way. Would you want to be represented by a lawyer who hadn’t actually passed the bar exam because some official said it didn’t matter? Would you be comfortable being operated on by a surgeon who had been excused from her exams because they made her too anxious? Would you want to drive over a bridge everyday if you weren’t sure the people who designed it got the math right?

Besides, as I have said elsewhere, if courses and exams can be waived, why not the thesis, too? One might answer that of course no one would ever do that, but up until last week I would have assumed that no one would ever do this.

For all of our coverage of this story, please click here

After tense debate, controversial Senate motion to grant Dean of Graduate Studies sweeping powers tabled–for now

Faculty members at the University of Manitoba refused to pass a motion at a Senate meeting Wednesday that would have given the dean of Graduate Studies the authority to waive certain academic requirements when resolving student appeals.

The Senate Committee on Rules and Procedures recommended that granting the dean authority to waive academic requirements was consistent with the university’s policy to resolve student appeals at the lowest level possible.

For all of our coverage of this story, please click here.

The motion read: “Senate, based upon the University bylaw granting Deans a broad and general oversight of the ‘general supervision and direction over the Faculty’ and the approved Academic Guide of the Faculty of Graduate Studies which tasks the Dean with seeking informal solutions to student appeals before a hearing, rule that the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies has jurisdiction to waive academic requirements.”

The motion was brought before Senate after math professor Gabor Lukacs took legal action against the university over what he believed was an unfair decision on the part of Dean of Graduate Studies, John Doering, to award a student their PhD without passing a comprehensive PhD exam required to graduate.

Although several faculty members indirectly referred to Lukacs’ ongoing battle with the university when discussing the motion, U of M president David Barnard steered the conversation away from the case. Barnard explained that, considering it is an ongoing personnel matter, it was inappropriate to discuss details of the case during open session.

Over half a dozen faculty members expressed their concern with passing the motion. Some members felt that it would essentially give the dean the power to grant degrees, which was particularly concerning in regards to granting degrees at the Masters or PhD level.

U of M Graduate Students Association president Meaghan Labine pointed out that there needed to be a more consistency in the appeals process and  “a greater definition of what deans can do.”

Senate members voted to table the motion for further review by the Senate Executive Committee.

At the end of the day, students have to be able to do the work.

The case of Gabor Lukacs, the University of Manitoba professor who has been suspended after complaining that a PhD student was permitted to skip a comprehensive exam, raises a whole host of questions about the state of the Canadian academy. For one thing, where is the CAUT and its academic freedom fund? For another thing, given that, by all accounts, Lukacs had only the best interests of the U of M and the academy in general in mind, isn’t a three month suspension awfully harsh? An assistant professor at U of M makes something in the neighbourhood of $70 000 a year based on the salary tables in the faculty collective agreement.  A three-month suspension amounts to a fine that may be in excess of $17 000. Even acknowledging that my estimate is gross pay, not net pay, the sum is staggering. And should a university really be punishing a professor for filing a lawsuit? Isn’t the right to seek redress before a court of law a basic right of every citizen in a free country?

For all of our coverage of this story, please click here.

Still more troubling is the rationale provided by the university. U of M claims Lukacs violated privacy rules when he disclosed details about a student in his suit, but given that his complaint was that a student was unjustly allowed to circumvent a requirement, how could he avoid discussing the student? In any case, the name of the student has not been reported in the media, so where is the harm?

Of course, individuals have a right to a reasonable amount of privacy, but it’s possible things have gone too far. Several years ago, I tried to get my university to include a photo of each student in the instructor’s electronic class list. Such a system makes it easier for profs to learn their students’ names, and it exists at some other schools. But, I was told, even though the computer system could produce such a list, the feature was disabled out of concerns for the students’ privacy. But surely what a student looks like need not be kept private from the students’ own professors! I fought with the registrar for a while over it, and was told at one point it was in the works, but it never happened, and eventually I gave up.

When it comes to disabilities, the lid is kept on even more tightly. Every once in a while I am contacted by our university’s disability office and, from the quality of  the communication, one would imagine it was a matter of national security. I am told that the student has a documented disability — typically a learning disability — and I am invited to indicate the accommodations I am willing to make. Can I see the document? No. What is the exact condition? I am not allowed to know. Who documented it? Based on what? What expertise does the professional in question have in the area of learning disabilities? None of your business, I am told. In short, for all I know, Mr and Mrs Anxious took Johnny to see their family doctor and said, “Johnny gets nervous when he takes a test.” Dr Busy says, “Oh, well, let me write you a note,” scribbles something about “test anxiety,” and, voila, Johnny has ” a documented learning disability.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is always the case, and of course, there are many legitimate disabilities, physical and psychological that should be accommodated. And when it comes right down to it, I accommodate Johnny anyway, because the requests are few, and having a few extra hours in a private room to write a test really doesn’t have that much impact anyway. In my experience, what Johnny can’t figure out in three hours, he can’t figure out in five, either. But I do think that professors have the right to know exactly what they are accomodating for the sake of academic integrity.

Academic integrity brings us back to the case at hand. Like Lukacs, I suspect, I maintain that accommodation should only be allowed when, ultimately, the student is still required to demonstrate the same skills as everyone else.  I fully understand the anxiety around taking PhD comprehensive exams — I took them myself — and they are no picnic. They’re not like writing an undergraduate midterm: each one is a whole year’s worth of reading, packed into three long (or, rather, short) hours of non-stop, hand-destroying, writing. They are intense. On the other hand, your examiners give you a quiet place to write, and no one is looking over your shoulder with a stopwatch and a stick. Moreover,  they test something real. They test a would-be academic’s ability to get a question, and to answer it, on the spot, by using her skills and knowledge.

Now, can you think of a job that requires a PhD, and where people ask you questions and you are expected to respond right away based on your expertise? Oh, wait! I know! University professor! Thinking on the spot is a vital part of the job, and anyone who finds that too stressful needs to find another line of work. Sure, sometimes a prof has to say “I don’t know” or “I’ll find out for you,” but she can’t keep saying “Your question makes me too nervous to respond to you.”  I know many people who are afraid to fly and I would not advise any of them to become pilots. I have a moderate fear of heights, so, no, I can’t help you shingle your roof. I could have been a surgeon, but the sight of blood makes me woozy.

And if learning things and answering hard questions about what I learned made me freak out, I would have learned to handle it (and I know people who have done that, too), or I wouldn’t have become a professor. It’s just part of the job. I know nothing about the individual student in this case: perhaps he is a fine person and I wish him all the success and happiness life can afford. But I still think a degree has to mean something significant. And if you can’t sit down in a quiet place, and answer questions about mathematics, you shouldn’t have a PhD in mathematics.

Barring any surprising revelations in this case, I hope professor Lukacs wins his fight, and I hope the U of M pays him back the money they owe him, and I really hope they apologize to him. In public. I’m sure he won’t consider that a violation of his privacy.

-photo courtesy of ccarlstead

And no labour unrest

Faculty at the University of Manitoba recently ratified their collective agreement with the university that provides a 4.4 per cent raise over the next three years.

This is quite a tiny increase, compared to the 2007 agreement that saw salaries for academic staff rise 2.5 per cent in the first and second year and a 2.9 per cent in the third year, a deal reached only after narrowly avoiding a strike. Considering the professors held a strike that lasted four days in 2001, and another that lasted 23 days in 1995, it’s surprising this round of negotiations resolved itself without any major problems. At least, not that we know about yet.

Members of the University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA), which represents approximately 1 ,700 professors, lecturers, librarians, and instructors, will receive a $500 lump sum pay increase in the first year, a one per cent increase in the second year, and a 2.9 percent increase in the third.

The seemingly problem-free negotiations by far contrasts the contract negotiations this year between the university and security services officers, which came to a complete breakdown over the summer.

The university had been in talks with Security Services for a year. When these negotiations stalled in early August, the university presented the small membership of 27 employees with what they called their final offer, along with the threat of a lock out if they voted not to take it. When officers voted not to accept, the threat proved not to be an empty one, and the officers were barred from campus .

While the lock out only lasted a few days and happened during a time when the campus was relatively quiet, it was still a scary time for students and staff who didn’t know who was patrolling the campus or when (if ever) these officers were coming back.

As UMFA president Cameron Morrill put it in the Winnipeg Free Press, this is unfortunately just a sign of the times at the university which has been facing $36.4 million budget shortfall for 2010. When U of M president David Barnard first annouced the shortfall last fall, the campus was filled with rumours and uncertainty over what would befall the university. Aside from announcing some “resource optimization” measures and tuition fee increases, administrators have mostly left staff and students in the dark.

The results of these budget constraints are starting to come to light with each labour relations issue that arises. Considering the majority of  university’s budget is comprised of salaries and benefits for faculty and staff, there’s no doubt that the relatively small increase for faculty members is a reflection of the U of M’s current money woes, and  judging by preliminary data from Statistics Canada, still leaves the U of M far behind many universities across the country in terms of professor pay.

The census debate keeps going and going and …

Over at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Stephen Gordon offers an argument why databases are prone to market failure. From a market standpoint, it is inefficient for multiple firms to generate essentially the same data: “It’s more efficient to simply have one database and allow access to multiple users.” Therefore, “the census is a natural monopoly.” Ideally, this particular monopoly would operate as a “pure public good,” universally accessible and free: “Usually, we’d try to set price equal to marginal cost. In this case, the marginal cost of providing access to a database is essentially zero: once it is set up, maintenance costs are trivial.”

But unlike census data in the United States, Statistics Canada charges a fee, at least for the complex data sought by businesses and academics, and there is a significant impact on scholarship: “A Canadian professor who works at a publicly-funded university must obtain research grants from publicly-funded institution in order to pay for data – that have already been collected! – from yet another government agency. Too often, the game ends with the researcher abandoning the project or choosing to use US data instead.”

So if the cost of census data, as Statistics Canada is responsible for generating 20 per cent of its own revenue, is a deterrent to using Canadian data, then combining that deterrent with the fact that the long form census will no longer be voluntary “things will get much, much worse.”

Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry, who has chronicled every turn of the great census debate, has posted the National Citizens Coalition’s response to those who would be critical of the government’s decision to scrap the census long form. Basically people who rely on Statistics Canada for data are freeloaders: “It is nice to receive free statistics at the expense of taxpayers, but our government should not be compelling this cooperation with the threat of jail time nor should we be bankrolling the whole endeavour.”

This is probably a little late in the census debacle to bring this up, but all this reminds me of a theory one of my professors from the University of Manitoba developed, called something like the hot dog cart theory of politics. I always figured he was joking, at least a little. But the theory goes something like this: in every election, camera crews, in search of hapless citizens to give their view from the street, will always be able to corner hot dog vendors. Being behind a cart, their livelihood, they have nowhere to go, so they give their opinion.

Making the long form census voluntary, it seems, would be like relying on data taken solely from hot dog vendors and then trying to say it is representative of the whole country.

Province approves large increases for dentistry and MBA students, while rejecting several others

The Manitoba government has accepted proposals to permit massive tuition increases for students in dentistry and students in the master’s of business administration program, while rejecting several other proposals from the province’s universities. And, like decisions made elsewhere regarding tuition, there appears to be no concrete rationale, no underlying principle, no apparent reason whatsoever really, why significant tuition increases are permitted for some programs but not others. Or, for that matter, why some programs wouldn’t see tuition decrease.

Of 10 requests made by the University of Manitoba, and two made by the University of Winnipeg, the Council on Post-Secondary Education (COPSE), which serves as a buffer between the government and universities, recommended that four programs be permitted to increase tuition. Of those four, the province accepted only two. COPSE does not make public its reasoning for recommending or not recommending tuition increases to the government.

A proposal, recommended by COPSE, to increase tuition for the U of M’s dental hygiene diploma by 20 per cent was rejected by the department of advanced education because  of supposedly insufficient “future income” for graduates. Dental hygienists earn around $60,000 per year depending on region and experience. The province’s denial of a tuition increase for dental hygiene, on grounds that compared tuition and earnings, is curious. If such a rationale can be used to increase tuition, even though it wasn’t in this case, couldn’t it be used as a justification to lower tuition?

To draw a comparison with another program, a four year arts degree sets U of M students back by about $11,280, while the two-year dental hygiene diploma costs a little over $13,000, when accounting for the qualifying year students are required to take.  However, it is likely that if opportunity costs are taken into account, due to the extra year of study and  therefore extra year of foregone earnings, the cost of an arts degree would likely be much more expensive. So, assuming that tuition for dental hygiene is set correctly in proportion to future earnings, wouldn’t this suggest that arts students who have lower earning potential (see here, bottom of page) are paying too much and should have their costs lowered? Of course, neither the university or the province has plans to lower tuition.

The province used entirely different reasoning to explain its rejection of a proposed increase to medicine by 73 per cent: to ensure “that recruitment of additional doctors is not compromised.” Presumably, this means that students would be deterred from entering medical school if tuition was too high. Well, maybe, I suppose, if you ignore doctor’s salaries, this reasoning might have some traction.

Presently medical school tuition in Manitoba is $6,700. If the increase were permitted, tuition would have risen to $11,591, and, while the national average is $10,216, that figure is pulled down by Quebec where medical students pay about $2,400. Manitoba tuition would have stayed well below several other medical schools, like the University of British Columbia, or the University of Toronto, that charge in excess of $15,000 per year.

And even if some students were deterred from applying to medical school, the U of M received 851 applications in 2009, and admitted only 110. Though not all of those students are likely to meet admissions standards, it is overblown to suggest that the pool of acceptable applicants would disappear. To offset any declines in applications due to higher costs, the university could also open its doors to students outside Manitoba, as only six out-of-province students were admitted in 2009, in line with protectionist university policy.

The decision to deny a tuition increase to medicine becomes even more obtuse when considering the fact that tuition for dentistry students–who already pay more than $12,000 compared to medicine’s $6,700–will rise by 20 per cent. To add to the confusion, in its statement, the province provided no justification as to why dentistry students, as well as MBA students, would see their tuition rise. Are those programs somehow special?

When raising tuition, it seems business programs are the favoured target

The way by which tuition fees are set in Canada is nothing short of insane. There is no overarching principle to point to, such as an agreement on the proportion of their education students should be fairly asked to pay. And while coming to an answer to that question would be wholly arbitrary, it would be nothing compared to the blatantly politicized process being witnessed across the country.

Universities take proposals to provincial governments outlining their financial shortfalls and explain that if only tuition were allowed to rise they could ameliorate their problems. Student groups, in turn, take their own proposals to the government claiming that any tuition hike would be nothing short of devastation. The province then comes to some conclusion based on analysis that must assuredly be plucked from thin air, and then sets the price.

While I am generally unpersuaded by the argument that keeping tuition low is a social necessity, there doesn’t appear to be any coherence to why some faculties are permitted to raise tuition and not others. Or put another way, why students in some faculties will continue to enjoy comparatively lower tuition while others will not.

Just last week, the Alberta government ruled that some faculties were worthy of tuition increases while others were not so worthy of tuition increases. At the University of Alberta tuition will rise between 15 and 66 per cent  in engineering, pharmacy, grad studies and business. Proposed increases for the U of A faculties of medicine, law, dentistry and others were denied. At the University of Calgary, only tuition for business school was permitted to rise.

A similar scenario is about to play out two provinces over as the University of Manitoba is preparing proposals to increase tuition in no fewer than eight professional programs, which want to see tuition rise between 20 and 114 per cent. The first faculty to take its proposal public was the Izzy Asper School of Business, with Dean Glen Feltham holding several Town Halls with students last week. The Manitoba government will only consider tuition increases for professional schools, and none from the arts and science.

The Alberta government argues that the faculties approved for tuition increases made a sound argument as to why, when tuition was reduced to 2004 levels and increases were capped at inflation, tuition was too low to begin with. In addressing these “market anomalies” the government compared the cost of tuition for programs at comparable universities.

Although there is an appeal to some principle, that the benchmark for raising tuition include some reference to costs at other schools, different standards appear to be applied. For instance, why would medicine at the University of Alberta be denied a tuition increase? It is true that at $12, 460 per year, tuition for the U of A’s medical department is somewhat above the national average of $10, 261, but that average includes Quebec where, because of a long-standing tuition freeze, a year of medical school costs $2,468.

Now if you look at schools that the U of A might reasonably be compared with, like, I don’t know, the University of Calgary, which, as I understand, is a short drive from the U of A, a different picture emerges. Medical school tuition at the U of C is $17,850 which is on par with the University of Toronto which charges $17, 200. The U of A proposal to raise med school tuition to $15,100 would have brought it inline with the University of British Columbia, but would still be well below Calgary and most Ontario schools.

Compare that to the U of A’s business school which was given the green light to raise tuition. At $5,100 per year, it was, like medicine, close to on par with the national average for business school tuition, but, unlike medicine, will now rise and be more comparable to some of the more expensive business programs in the country. Are business schools special?