TWU tuition skyrockets past
$8,000 a semester

Public universities and colleges included in ban

By Alison Fraser
Mars’ Hill (Trinity Western University)

LANGLEY, B.C. (CUP) Trinity Western
University students will pay more next
fall, as tuition fees increase by 7.2 per
cent, bringing the cost of one semester
to $8,250 for undergraduates and $6,600
for graduates.

Representatives from TWU’s admin-
istration explained the changes and
answered questions at an open student
forum held on March 8.

“While we are certainly more expensive
in total cost than the public universities
in Canada, it is important to remember
that we aren’t delivering education in
the same way as those universities,”
said Marilyn Crone, TWU’s operations
consultant. “The experience is different
here.”

Unlike public universities, which are
largely funded by the government,
TWU, as a private institution, does not
receive these funds.

“T think a lot of people could see the
justification of the tuition increase; at
the same time, though, it is still diffi-
cult,” said Norman Van Eeden Peters-
man, president of the student associa-
tion. “I think the thing to recognize,
however, is that we are a niche market.”
“We are a tuition-driven and a tuition-
funded university,” said Jim Poulsen,
vice-president of finance. “About 83
per cent of our net revenues come from
tuition.”

The university generates close to $50
million in revenue per year, the major-
ity of which comes from students. The
remaining portion is brought in from
other sources including donors, ancil-
laries, and the housing and bookstore
businesses. Approximately $5 million is
returned to students as financial aid.
“When we increased tuition by 7.2 per
cent, we also increased financial aid

by 7.2 per cent to help keep [students]
here and recruit new students to come,”
Poulsen said.

The fee hike will fund an increase of

three per cent to the budget to pay staff
and faculty salaries, up from one per
cent for each of the past two years.
“There is nobody out there who gets
whatever is leftover at the end of the
day,” Crone said. “It is all invested
back into fulfilling the not-for-profit
general purposes of the university.”
“With more academic programs that
we are wanting to expand, plus the
improvements that we need to make
to facilities, there are going to be
increased costs,” Crone added.
“At this time in Trinity’s life we
don’t have those endowments
in place to try to offset those
costs.” Poulsen admitted
that financing the
university’s
operations is never a
simple task.
“It’s a complex
challenge to
manage a large

organization like Trinity Western
University,” he said. “There are no easy
answers.”

In an attempt to mitigate some of the
increase in tuition fees, housing prices
have been adjusted. Rates have been
reduced for 63 per cent of TWU’s on-
campus housing units, and the remain-
ing units will have no increase.