Council officially rejects restructuring of fees

Change to graduate studies fees receives a mixed welcome

TESSA VANDERHART STAFF

The faculty council of graduate studies voted unanimously to reject the restructuring of graduate student continuing fees on Thursday, April 5 — though the plan will still be discussed by the Board of Governors finance committee.

Under the restructuring, the $674 continuing fee that graduate students pay each year to continue in a program would be replaced with a flat-term fee of $1,000, payable in each of up to three terms of registration each academic year.

The restructuring was officially proposed on March 22 by a committee struck in May 2005. The “working group,” as vice-provost (student affairs) David Morphy termed it, is comprised is comprised of four people including Morphy, graduate studies dean Jay Doering, an executive assistant of the vice-president (academic) and

Both Morphy and Doering declined to give comment on the fee restructuring itself.

The faculty council, in addition to unanimously rejecting the plan, supported the GSA position on restructuring fees.

The graduate studies executive committee, of which dean Doering is chair, also rejected the proposal. This committee is composed of the associate deans of graduate studies and a representative from each department that offers graduate studies. According to Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) president Meghan Gallant, the restructuring was not on the agenda, but the GSA raised the issue — and concerns were voiced over the process by which the fee restructuring was to take place, the information provided, and the lack of discussion. The executive committee passed a motion requesting that the Board of Governors defer voting on the restructuring until students and staff receive more information about the plan.

The restructuring plan, and the GSA platform “Deconstructing reconstruction: A response to graduate tuition fee restructuring” were presented to the finance committee of the university Board of Governors in closed session on April 10.

The finance committee will now decide whether to bring the restructuring to the Board of Governors or return it to the original committee.

In the meantime, the GSA is holding a panel discussion on the restructuring on Wednesday, April 11, featuring Gallant, a representative from UMFA, and Richard Lobdell, vice-provost (programs) as the working group-position representative.

The plan to restructure graduate student fees was announced in a e-mail signed by Doering that was sent to all graduate students on March 23, requesting feedback by March 30.

To make clear that the restructuring was being proposed by the university administration and not the faculty of graduate studies, Doering sent out an e-mail on April 2 explaining that although the graduate studies listserv was used to forward the email, and his name signed to the end of the announcement, the fee restructuring is an initiative of the administration. “I would like to be clear that the proposal to restructure fees was NOT a proposal of the Faculty of Graduate Studies or its Dean, but rather a proposal from Central Administration of which I was simply one voice,” wrote Doering.

The GSA platform lists seven concerns, notably that the proposed fee structure is not revenue-neutral and will increase the cost of a graduate education.

For example, most master’s programs at the U of M are “one-year master’s,” requiring one year of coursework and usually another of research, as listed on departmental websites. Students pay $4,177 for the first year and $647 in continuing fees for each consecutive year. The expected time to completion is two years, but on average U of M students take three years and eight months to complete their degrees, according to internal statistics.

Doering said that the restructuring would in fact be cost-neutral for students, as it is intended to encourage students to graduate more quickly. He added that U of M students complete degrees more slowly than other Canadian graduate students.

The restructured fees would also be “grandfathered,” which would mean that students already enrolled in graduate programs would be assessed flat-term fees retroactively, for a minimum of one year and a maximum of six, according to the graduate studies fee restructuring website.

Another of the GSA’s concerns was that the increase disproportionately affected international students.

Doering also said that the restructuring would be cost-netural for international students, a recent addition to the plan. Currently, all international students with a 3.5 GPA are eligible to receive an International Student Scholarship of $500, almost covering the differential fee that international students pay, equal to 100 per cent of tuition (for continuing graduate students, $674). More funding would be added to the scholarship to increase the amount to $3,000 per year, so that international graduate students with the highest GPAs would continue to pay the same as domestic students.