[Plants-grads] [Fwd: Fwd: Graduate Fee Restructuring]

-- Muthukumar Bagavathiannan, Ph.D. Scholar, Division of Plant Science, The University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada R3T 2N2 Ph:001-204-269-1223 "Be the change you want to see in the world" -Mahatma Gandhi ----- Forwarded message from Meghan Gallant pres@umgsa.ca ----- Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:32:23 -0500 From: Meghan Gallant pres@umgsa.ca Reply-To: Meghan Gallant pres@umgsa.ca Subject: Graduate Fee Restructuring To: undisclosed-recipients@ Hi Councillors, I wanted to provide an update to those of you who weren't available to hear today's presentation from the graduate fees restructuring committee. And to let you know that the GSA campaigns committee is meeting on Wednesday, March 28 at 5pm in the GSA Office to discuss follow-up to this news. Please circulate to anyone who may be interested. The fee restructuring committee has proposed to eliminate the current fee model that has students pay tuition fees for the first year of a Master's or first two years of a PhD, and then pay reduced 'continuing fees' after that. Instead, they are proposing that students pay a 'term fee': a flat, unchanging fee each term throughout the full duration of a degree. The current recommendation is to set this fee at $1,000, although this is subject to approval from the University President and the Board of Governors. This brings the cost of a graduate program, whether Master's of PhD, to $3,000 per year. The presenters indicated that this would be "approximately revenue neutral". However, we crunched some numbers this afternoon, and this model means fairly substantial increases to the cost of graduate eduction. Specifically (in most programs): 23% increase to the total cost of a 2 year Master's 44% increase to the total cost of a 5 year PhD For international students, the differential fee would now apply to all fees assessed (differential fees do not apply to continuing fees under the current model). This means: 33% increase to the total cost of a 2 year Master's 60% increase to the total cost of a 5 year Phd Fees would continue to be assessed for any subsequent years at the $1000 per term rate. We are obviously very concerned about the impact this will have on access and on students' ability to complete their degrees in reasonable time. We are preparing a full response to the recommendations, although this has been difficult given the lack of information provided thus far. We've requested a copy of the presentation given today, although the presenters were uncertain as to whether we would be allowed to have a copy. We'll provide more updates and analysis as we have them, until then please let students and faculty in your departments know that this is happening. Please contact me if you have any questions. Meghan -- Meghan Gallant President University of Manitoba Graduate Students' Association Local 96 - Canadian Federation of Students 221 University Centre Phone: (204) 474-9181 Cell: (204) 291-6239 www.umgsa.ca ----- End forwarded message ----- ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ -- Bev Godard Secretary Department of Plant Science University of Manitoba 66 Dafoe Road Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2 Phone: (204) 474-8563 Fax: (204) 474-7528 Bev_Godard@umanitoba.ca