Recently, the Society of Graduate Students at Western (SOGS) asked its membership the following question: Are you in favour of a fifty (50) per cent reduction in tuition fees for all graduate students once they reach the post-residency phase of their degree, that is to say, the completion of course work and the formal commencement of their thesis or dissertation project?
The results were overwhelming – 26 per cent of the SOGS membership (5,000-plus students strong) responded. Of the 1,412 total votes, 1,324 (93.8 per cent) voted ‘yes.’
The vote confirmed graduate students at Western, once they realize what post-residency fees are, and how they exist around Canada, cannot believe this university does not have them, and begin to demand and expect them.
But what are post-residency fees? Why are these important for graduate students?
Simply put, these fees represent a reduction in tuition when a graduate student reaches a major milestone: the end of coursework, and/or comprehensive examinations, and the beginning of the final step of a graduate degree. This final step, of course, is a thesis, dissertation or placement.
Ontario has the highest tuition in Canada and students in this province do not have access to any form of reduction in those fees during their degrees. In 2013-14, Western students paid $6,511/$15,359 in tuition (domestic/international). This is without factoring in ancillary fees, which in Ontario, are also the highest in Canada.
The comparison between our province and the rest of Canada is striking.
In other provinces, tuition is lower and many universities offer some form of post-residency fees. Suffice it to say, post-residency fees in Canada are the norm, and not the exception, as is the case in Ontario.
Many other Canadian institutions have either lower tuition than Western, or offer a post-residency fee reduction to make up the difference. At the University of New Brunswick and the University of British Columbia, tuition starts at a rate lower than Western and they introduce post-residency fees. At the University of Manitoba, tuition starts at $4,283/$8,556 and drops to $691 in the post-residency fee phase of the degree.
One of the striking examples is Dalhousie University in Halifax. A graduate student in 2013-2014 starts a PhD at Dalhousie paying $8,286/$16,488, which is higher than Western. However, after the second year, that same student pays much less: $2,106/$10,208. Moreover, masters students at Dalhousie pay the same $2,106/$10,208 after their first year of a two-year program.
My colleagues and I, armed with this information, started talking to graduate students around campus. Now, we have more than 750 signatures from the campus community on a petition demanding post-residency fees from Western, alongside endorsements from several departmental graduate student associations. This is in addition to the SOGS plebiscite referenced above.
As the Board of Governors prepares to vote in yet another tuition fee increase, Western has an opportunity to be a leader in Ontario, and follow the rest of Canada. No institution in this province offers post-residency fees after the first year of a two-year Masters and after the second year of a four-year PhD degree. Only a few offer reductions in the fifth year of a PhD degree.
We cannot wait for the province to make the changes necessary to bring post-residency fees; we must demand this together as students, faculty and Western administrators. It is incumbent upon Western to recognize the high and inaccessible cost of graduate education (and the sub-poverty level wages the majority of graduate students earn) and work to make changes.
If Western instituted post-residency fees, this would represent an important savings for graduate students on this campus. Remember, minimum funding packages at Western – as essential as they are – keep graduate students well below the poverty line. I recall the recent story in the Western student Gazette about graduate student TAs needing to use food banks. This is a sad reality.
Ask yourselves: How is a graduate student, who can barely pay for their basic living expenses, supposed to conduct research and travel to conferences if their funding cannot keep pace with tuition and inflation?
The answer is simple: They cannot, as $12,000-$14,000 is not a living wage. It’s not even enough to qualify as poverty-level wages. It is unreasonable to expect graduate students on a funding clock (and when this funding is not enough to make ends meet) to conduct research at the level which will allow Western to stand out on the global stage.
If graduate students struggle, so will Western.
Instead of ‘Going Global,’ we will simply be going – and continue to go – broke and in circles.
Kevin Godbout, a Modern Languages and Literatures PhD candidate, is the current president of the Society of Graduate Students at Western.