News

At last week’s Board meeting Concordia’s Board of Governors approved our 2018-19 budget. This has been a challenging year, but the budget is balanced and has been developed predicated on the following main assumptions: A cut to our Government of Alberta capital grant, a 2% tuition increase for local students, a 5% tuition increase on the international tuition supplement for new international students (with a grandfathering tuition-freeze commitment for existing students), a freeze on mandatory student fees, allowances for select required capital costs, a COLA increase for staff, and an adjustment to the practice of not charging students for courses above 5 in one semester or into the spring and summer terms. We have also made allowances for the hiring of 7 new faculty members across the institution and a small number of necessary support staff.

It is regrettable but necessary to increase tuition after having voluntarily frozen local student tuition for the past 4 years. While public universities have received additional funding from the Government of Alberta to cover these tuition freezes, Concordia and the other independent institutions have not. To date this has cost us over $500,000 and by 2019-20 that figure will rise to over $1 million. Without this government ‘tuition backfill’ we fall further and further behind our public counterparts. We have now reached a point, moving into our 5^th year of tuition freezes, where we can no longer sustain the practice. Representations have been made to the Ministry of Advanced Education to include us in the tuition backfill for next year. Should this occur, we will reduce our tuition increase accordingly.

Our budget for 2018-19 is conservative and realistic. It has involved us making some difficult decisions and changing the way we do some things. Most importantly, it is balanced and as such provides for the long-term sustainability of our university.