UBC Board votes to hike tuition, again

why I voted no, again

Thursday, December 4th, 2025, UBC’s Board again voted to hike tuition fees for domestic and international students. The administration’s presentation presented tuition increases (between 2 and 4 percent) as a prudent, reasonable, and moderate action. They laid out the cost pressures UBC is facing. The spoke with a solemn tone on the objective necessity of increasing tuition fees. They compared UBC to comparable ‘sister’ institutions to point out our moderateness of increase. They spoke of the global hunt for excellence that hiking tuition fees would allow. Within the frame of their narrative there could be no alternative to tuition fee increases. To hold back would be tantamount to fiscal malfeasance (my gloss, not their words).

The majority of the board voted to increase tuition fees. Alongside of myself, the two UBC-V student governors and one appointed governor voted against the tuition increase. No governor energetically advocated for a tuition increase. Their mood might be best captured by one appointed governor who said “no one likes to increase tuition.”

My comments on voting no to tuition hikes

[This is a verbatim transcript of my spoken remarks. I used a web-based transcription software to capture and transcribe my comments from the posted webcast of the open meeting. Minor edits for clarity were made.]

In the early 1980s, I stood outside the UBC Board of Governor’s meeting with a group of other students who had a coffin carrying the ‘demise of post-secondary education’ as we faced double-digit tuition increases.

In the 1990s, I was part of a student occupation that took over the Grace Building, which was the campus of the City University of New York’s grad school. We occupied it for several weeks in the context of the citywide system of CUNY facing nearly doubling of tuition fees.

When I first joined the board in 2017, we faced, again, this juggernaut of creatively lacking in imagination tuition increases. I voted against tuition increases at that point in time, and I have subsequently done so ever since. I will continue to vote against tuition fees.

There really is no need to have private charges for public education. We solved that question over a century ago with a public education with kindergarten to grade 12. We don’t charge people for that. We’re moving that way in terms of provision of daycare services. In addition to that, we recognize the essential need of public health care and though all this costs some, we certainly don’t face the same burdens that you see south of the border, below the 49th parallel.

I appreciate the sincerity of my colleagues who talk of market pressures and being “globally on the hunt for the best talent, … the best student talent, around the world, advancing our research excellence, and supporting our newly launched strategic directions” and how this is all funded [in part] by the regularity of tuition fee increases.

As much as I appreciate your sincerity and understand that you’re trapped within the market model and the terms of reference in which you are put within, and perhaps we can’t expect any other outcome, there has to be other ways of looking at this situation. To be enslaved to the constant language of market mechanisms. That somehow [doing anything else is] outside our ability to do anything. That [it is] completely under the control of this invisible hand sitting there pulling the strings. We really need to think this through. Perhaps we should think less of utility, more of creativity and intangible thoughts and benefits.

I speak a different language than my colleagues do. I think of the students I know who are struggling with low paid work and working many hours. I know that because they come to me to ask for extensions on assignments. They explain to me, sometimes in tears, about the difficulties they’re facing. I say this because of the students who have talked about this in class. I hear them in the hallways. Talking about the inordinate amount of rent they’re paying for really shitty places to live. I hear it in the worries over food security. I hear this, and I don’t want to be party to increasing the unaffordability of the lives of our students.

I don’t want to be party to making their lives more miserable.

While I appreciate that the reasonable person sitting on this table may think it’s in the best interest of UBC to vote continuously and constantly for increased tuition fees. I do wish, not on this day, at this moment, or ever, to be party to making our students’ lives more miserable. I never have been, and I choose to maintain consistent to my convictions and my principles. I do not wish to be party to making things worse for our students.

We heard talk of storytelling, [telling a story that better explains rising tuition fees].

I’d like us to tell a story of empathy and compassion.

I’d like us to tell a story of caring and concern, not a story of marketplace and mechanisms and dollar values and how we fit with our comparator institutions.

If it’s about storytelling I think we should be telling stories based in truth, not in narrative, not in brand, not innovation. I think it’s really time to move out of that market place avenue.

I’m looking here at something I’ve written before, and it’s amazing how these things can just last. I could have read the entire statement I wrote 10 years ago about tuition fees. I could have written the same speech I gave outside the old administration building 40 plus years ago. Which is really, I think, a crying shame. We are stuck in the same old rationalizations.

It’s time that we actually think about ending the notion of tuition fees. Moving the institution to a mode of approach that values education as a public good, not a private privilege. There are many ways of doing that. We’ve had people on this faculty who’ve presented possibilities for that. It’s no longer sufficient for people to say, ‘Well, the government is going to do this, the government is going to do that, we have no options.’

I think it’s time to change the story. Clearly, if you listen to the idea of how UBC markets itself about going forward, et cetera, Well maybe it’s time to go forward with sincerity and authenticity, rooted in a sense of compassion and care and empathy.

I will stop here. I fully anticipate this will pass. I fully anticipate hearing people explain all the reasons why I am misguided, misunderstand the situation, that I’m not realistic, I’m not pragmatic, I’m not objectively based in the temporal reality of this university. But I think I would with respect truly beg to differ and say that it’s time to expand the way in which we think about what our task is at hand. There’s just no way I can ever vote for, especially in this context, with these rationalizations, an increase in tuition fees.

Thank you.