Budget Highlights

Planning for growth

The budget framework provides for:

• the addition of 372 full-time undergraduate and graduate students.
• improvements on campus including: an additional $400,000 to UVic's libraries for acquisitions; $687,000 for quality improvements such as new course selections and added faculty in high-demand areas; and $100,000 for new resources for students with a disability and counselling services.
• additional space on campus by allocating $1.6 million from international student tuition revenue to establish a building fund.

Tuition

The budget framework provides for:

• a 16.6 per cent increase in domestic undergraduate tuition, raising the cost of annual tuition to $4,238 in 2004-05 from $3,635 in 2003-04.
• a seven per cent hike in domestic graduate tuition, an increase from $4,116 in 2003-04 to $4,404 in 2004-05.
• an increase in tuition for undergraduate international students raising the cost of annual tuition to $12,500 in 2004-05 from $11,000 in 2003-04. This increase reflects the second year of a four-year program moving toward a cost-recovery model for international students.

Student financial assistance

The budget framework provides for an increase of $2,009,500 in student financial assistance. With this commitment, UVic has surpassed its goal to be among the top 20 per cent of Canadian universities offering student financial assistance. In 2004-05 UVic's total student financial assistance will exceed $9.9 million.

The 2004-05 program includes:

• a one-time-only allocation of $900,000
• recurring funds of $779,000
• $81,000 from differential fees
• $199,500 from international student revenue
• $50,000 in graduate teaching fellowships

Differential fees and program fees

Differential fees are applied to base tuition in programs where there is a higher program delivery cost, where graduates tend to move into careers with substantially higher average earnings and where the faculties must remain competitive with other Canadian programs.

• The budget framework includes a $500 increase per term (to $1,000 per term) in the faculty of law differential fees, a continuation of a three-year plan introduced last year. Similar differential fees are proposed for 2005-06. The fees will increase law tuition in 2004-05 to $3,710.60 from $2,824.70.
• The budget framework increases the MBA differential fee by $811 per term in 2004-05, bringing the cost of tuition per term to $3,333.40 from $2,426.70.
• There is a $100 increase to the existing $500-per-term MBA program fee. An MBA program consists of six terms, but the program fee only applies to the first five terms.

Other fee increases

• Student residence fees will increase between 1.19 and 2.13 per cent.
• Rents in family student housing will rise between 4.9 and 7 per cent, the first increase in two years.
• Parking fees on campus will increase, on average, by about 15 per cent with 10 per cent of the increase allocated to initiatives in UVic's transportation demand management report.
• Child care fees will increase nominally by .98 to 1.14 per cent.
• After-school care fees will increase between 8.6 and nine per cent, reflecting a single monthly payment that covers all annual school closures.