Compulsory lab fees affect all faculties
University expects to collect $920,000 for 'continuing the laboratories'
CHELSE MCKEE, STAFF
Since the new university 2007-08 budget was announced in June, many students in the faculty of arts are paying new laboratory fees for required dry lab sections.
Of course the new lab fees were not strictly limited to the faculty of arts. Classes in all faculties are subject to the lab fee if they provide a lab section. The exception is the faculty of engineering, as students voted to increase tuition in March 2007, offsetting the cost of lab materials.
The lab fees range from $25 to $30 for every three credit hours with a lab section.
Departments that have dry laboratories, and consequently lab fees, include the language studies, like Spanish and French, film studies, philosophy, psychology, theatre and sociology.
The fees will be used “for continuing the laboratories,” states Elizabeth Ross, executive assistant to the dean of arts. As well, the fees will be destined for new equipment, repairs and maintenance.
The labs usually cost the faculty of arts over a million dollars each year. Ross anticipates receiving less than $100,000 for the faculty of arts.
“This is not a big thing for the faculty of arts as compared to science where just about every course has a lab.”
George Toles, film studies department head, said that “As [the faculty of arts] continues to have its own budget cuts, our means of finding money to get equipment repaired have been reduced. For that reason, we felt that it was not an unfair and distressing burden on . . . students. No program was obliged or strong-armed to go into this. With the tuition freeze . . . [there’s] as a secondary restriction to how much soft money there is for building programs.”
For the entire university, including the Bannatyne campus, the lab fees are expected to produce $920,000 this year, based on the number of labs that were offered last year.
The laboratory fees were passed at the June 19 Board of Governors meeting. Students are represented to the Board by three government-appointed representatives and two UMSU representatives. UMSU president Garry Sran also sits on the Board’s finance committee, which made the decision to introduce the fees.
Deborah McCallum, vice-president (administration), explained that “We have been considering [lab fees] for quite awhile.
“The tuition freeze has been in place for eight years, so there hasn’t been any other ways to generate new revenues to help maintain these labs and cover the increased cost. For example, in some labs, chemistry is a really good example, where the cost of chemicals has really skyrocketed over the past number of years. [Since] we haven’t been able to raise tuition, there hasn’t been any ways to cover the cost of those increases.”
Dan Lemay, a fourth-year political studies student, offered his opinion about the fees.
“I don’t like the lab fees ’cause I don’t like paying money, but it is something that needs to be done. If the university has increasing costs, then they have to find ways to pay for them.”
Hollie Pitcher, a third-year psychology student, is angry and suspicious of the university’s new fees.
“Instead of raising tuition, which [the university] can’t do because of the freeze, they make all these fees instead.”
