[ENCI-l] Engineering Tuition: Email from the Dean

Mon Feb 1 15:00:25 MST 2010

Dear Engineering Students,

As you may know, the Government of Alberta has asked Alberta universities to
propose market adjustments to the tuition fees for professional faculties.
They include engineering, business, law and medicine. We would like to
engage engineering students in this process. A final decision on a plan to
implement market modifiers is required by mid-April when the university
finalizes its budget for the next year.

An open discussion with about 60 engineering students was held the evening
of Friday, January 29 and a follow-on Engineering Student Forum will be held
on Thursday, February 11, from 5-7 pm in ENA 201. All interested parties are
invited to attend.

In order to familiarize yourself with some of the background on this issue,
please take a few minutes to read the information below (Background
Information). We are committed to providing you with factual information so
that we can have an open and constructive discussion.

We look forward to working with you on this important issue.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Cannon

Dean, Schulich School of Engineering

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

For the past five years, government policy has put a ceiling on tuition fees
including professional programs such as engineering. The cost of delivering
these programs, however, has not been capped. We now find ourselves in the
position where government funding (significantly affected by the economic
downturn) cannot make up the difference between tuition fees and program
delivery costs.

To cope with this impact, the university is in the midst of a large scale
overhaul to drastically streamline its operations. Even with these plans,
the cost of professional programs can't keep up with the cost of delivering
them. Our costs are high due to the intensive lab equipment needed,
additional contact time through labs and tutorials, as well as the costs of
recruiting high quality faculty members in high demand market sectors.
Currently, the tuition for a course in engineering is the same as any other
course in the university and does not fully reflect the actual additional
costs of our program, and also it does not align with the costs of other
engineering programs who compete for our students and faculty.

Compromising quality is not an option. The university has worked hard to
build world-class professional programs in medicine, law, business and
engineering, and will uphold this quality.

The resources are needed in engineering to: (1) maintain and renew
undergraduate laboratory equipment, (2) maintain high-quality instruction
and technical expertise, for which we are in competition with other
universities, (3) protect accreditation, which is at risk since we are
compared to engineering schools across the country that are better resourced
(see Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board Criteria and Procedures), and
(4) protect quality. The Schulich School of Engineering is well below its
peer group in terms of lab space per student and well below on all budget
measures, including dollars per undergraduate student, dollars per gradate
student and equipment funding per student. This data is available from the
NCDEAS survey (National Committee of Deans of Engineering and Applied
Science).

The Schulich School of Engineering is among the best in the country. The
fees, however, are not commensurate with its peers across the country. The
tuition for 2009-10 at schools we compete with for students and faculty are
as follows:

University of Waterloo $11,500

University of Toronto $9,347

Queen's University $8,215

University of Western Ontario $8,600 (approx average of tuition across 

all four years)

McMaster University $7,307

University of Ottawa $6,857

University of Calgary $5,677 (based on 11 courses)

University of Alberta $5,441 (to be increased similarly to the proposal 

from the U of C)

University of British Columbia $5,421

The current proposal from the University of Calgary to the government is to
increase the engineering course tuition by $200 per course. Arts and science
courses, which engineering students take as part of their degree, would not
be affected by this market modifier.

This increase would result in first year tuition for the Schulich School of
Engineering being $6,680 with increased amounts in upper years when the
number of engineering courses increases. Even with these increases, the
average yearly tuition would not exceed a number of other quality programs.
A similar increase is being proposed by the U of A.

The current plan is to implement the market modifiers in a phased approach
starting in September, 2010, and would roll out as follows:

Sept 2010: All 200 level engineering courses

Sept 2011: All 200 and 300 level engineering courses

Sept 2012: All 200, 300 and 400 level engineering courses

Sept 2013: All 200, 300, 400 and 500 level engineering courses as well as
internship courses (INTE)

This plan would have minimum impact on current students. However, the
ability of the University to implement a phased approach, as opposed to
applying market modifiers to all engineering courses in September, 2010 will
depend on the province's funding to the U of C for the 2010-11 fiscal year.
This will be announced on February 9, 2010 when the 

provincial budget is presented.

The above strategy is designed to recognize that current students are in
program and significant tuition changes could cause hardship when
alternative arrangements would be very hard to organize. However, it is also
designed so that the Schulich School of Engineering can maintain 

its quality into the future.

Dr. M. Elizabeth Cannon, PEng FCAE FRSC

Dean, Schulich School of Engineering

Professor, Department of Geomatics Engineering

University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW

Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4, CANADA

Tel: 403-220-5731, Fax: 403-284-3697

Email: cannon at ucalgary.ca

Web: schulich.ucalgary.ca 

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