Students Will Save 10% on University and College Tuition Starting Next Year

Students in Ontario pay some of the highest tuition fees in the world.

It’s no wonder that more than three-quarters of graduates have regrets about having subscribed to such a perilous financial situation.

It should be welcome news, then, that the Ontario government is planning to slash university and college tuition fees by 10%. The initiative will kick in for the 2019/2020 school year. Fees will frozen for the 2020/2021 school year.

University students are expected to save $660 per year on average; for college students, that number is $340. International students will not see a reduction in tuition, and their fees will not be frozen. Ontario’s university system, meanwhile, will lose around $300 million as a result of the tuition cuts.

This is just the first detail of a wider framework Doug Ford’s government is expected to announce later this week. Of course, lower tuition could be a meaningless gesture if rollbacks of student assistance follow.

“Students should remain cautious of reports of a 10-per-cent cut to tuition fees,” the Canadian Federation of Students’s Ontario chapter said in a tweet. “We are concerned about the intentions of this announcement and whether it will make [post secondary education] more affordable.”

Let’s file this under “wait and see” for now.