In Alberta, post-secondaries must discuss the proposed costs of tuition and fees for the next academic year with their student councils. At the University of Calgary, that’s the SU for undergraduates and the GSA for graduate students. A series of public and private meetings, known as the Tuition & Fees Consultation Committee (TFCC), occurs each year between student representatives and university leadership.
The SU has fought for students in an increasingly complex fiscal environment since 2019, when the Government of Alberta began reducing post-secondary operating grants by cutting them or leaving them unadjusted for inflation. The University of Calgary lost $100 million in just four years, and tuition and fees rose annually to compensate.
Below, we compare the university’s initial to final undergraduate proposals at this year’s TFCC. The SU successfully pushed back on international tuition hikes for the third year in a row, arguing that overburdening these students will see diminishing returns. If cost isn’t enough to deter global talent, the reputational impact of federal study permit caps might: the University of Calgary recorded a $35 million international revenue shortfall this year, even though Alberta does not traditionally receive enough international students to hit quota.
| Initial proposals (TFCC 2025) | Final proposals (TFCC 2025) |
| 2% domestic tuition increase | 2% domestic tuition increase |
| 4-6% program-dependent international tuition increase | 4% blanket international tuition increase |
| 4% mandatory non-instructional fee increase | 4% mandatory non-instructional fee increase |
| Guarantee of a maximum 10% year-on-year increase for program duration, 2026-27 international enrolments | Guarantee of a maximum 5% year-on-year increase for program duration, 2026-27 international enrolments |
While your SU can’t restore hundreds of millions of dollars alone, we show up for you whenever we can. On campus, we worked with the university to ensure greater access to information about how it spends your money. Efforts by students’ associations, including your SU, convinced the province to put a 2% cap on annual domestic tuition hikes in 2023, and issue a blanket denial to exceptional increase applications from post-secondaries, including the University of Calgary, for 2025-26. The university declined to apply for another exceptional increase this TFCC as well.
Still, only additional action by the Government of Alberta will end the post-2019 climate, which is why your SU contributed to a sector review by the Expert Panel on Post-Secondary Institution Funding this summer. We shared your experiences and promoted restored support to the university, with some of our concerns reflected in the final report. The Panel’s suggestions, which included a new funding formula of provincial reinvestment without compromising student affordability, were received positively by the Minister of Advanced Education.
Therefore, at this year’s TFCC, we asked university leadership to take meaningful action to acknowledge that students now shoulder enough of the funding burden. Our suggestions included a public statement that student affordability is at a tipping point, to a commitment to reducing tuition if provincial funding increases. Leadership responded in November by stating that the university champions student affordability to the province, but will make no commitments, even conditional ones, regarding tuition freezes or public advocacy efforts.
That isn’t good enough. Because we know that 90% of students worry most about tuition and fees, we make our advocacy transparent and available to you. You can see exactly what we say to decision-makers on your behalf when we lobby for restored funding. We work hard to maintain our services with one of the lowest students’ association fees nationally and tell you where every dollar you pay goes.
As we await updates from Advanced Education on next steps following the Expert Panel’s findings, we will continue to elevate your concerns while decisions are made. We renew our call for the university to stand with students by publicly recognizing that plugging budgetary shortfalls should no longer be left up to you.
The University of Calgary’s Board of Governors, on which the SU sits, officially votes on the revised proposals later this month. Last night, the SU’s governing Students’ Legislative Council voted to direct your President to vote against the increases. While precedent suggests the outcome may not be the one many students are hoping for, we will not let your voice go unheard in the room.
- If you have thoughts about your experience and these proposed increases that you’d like your SU to share directly with the Board of Governors, email your SU President before December 12.