Fees at several B.C. universities and colleges are about to become even more unaffordable for students and all while the Christy Clark government claims to have a system to cap fee increases by 2 per cent per year.

How is this possible? Let’s start with a bit of background.

Cast your mind back to 2001. Upon their election, the B.C. Liberal government deregulated tuition fees. What followed were several years of huge tuition fee increases that took B.C. from the second most affordable in Canada to one of the most expensive — all in just three years.

After provincewide student protests, tuition fees were again regulated and increases were capped at 2 per cent per year. However, this cap on fees was not legislated or regulated.

In fact, the cap on tuition fees is just a “policy of the ministry,” meaning that each minister can decide what it means. (There have been nine ministers of advanced education in the 10 years since the cap was introduced.) Because the cap is not an enforceable law or regulation, no one, including the minister, can be held accountable for breaking it.

Strike 1 against the tuition cap “policy.”

Strike 2 against the tuition fee cap is that it only applies to new programs. Institutions can introduce any program at essentially any fee level they choose. This obvious loophole quickly led to colleges and universities cancelling programs covered by the cap, and re-introducing them as new in order to sidestep the tuition fee limit.

Rather than banning this practice, the Ministry of Advanced Education has left it up to students to blow the whistle on institutions that are cheating the rules. But to survive a ministry review, an institution needs only to make small changes in course names, curriculum and program design. Presto! New program, 50-per-cent fee increase — totally allowed under the Christy Clark government’s bogus tuition fee cap.

Now we’re back to present day and watching Strike 3 against the tuition cap policy roll out before our eyes.

The last several B.C. budgets have included sizable, multimillion-dollar cuts in public funding to colleges and universities. Per-student funding had already been declining and was 15-per-cent lower than 2001 levels back in 2013 before the latest rounds of cuts.

These new cuts have made it nearly impossible to balance the books at our colleges and universities, especially for smaller institutions. This unjustified financial squeeze on public institutions has led to tremendous pressure on college and university boards of governors to find new ways around the tuition cap.

Beginning in earnest last year, colleges and universities started jacking up ancillary fees to levels never before seen in our province. These fees are not labelled as tuition fees and are generally directed to fund specific services, equipment or supplies. In almost all cases, these new fees were for items previously covered by tuition fees.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see what the colleges and universities are doing. Has the ministry taken action to stop this flagrant attempt to ignore the tuition cap? Not at all.

In fact, the current minister of advanced education has given the green light to colleges and universities to introduce “new mandatory fees for new services ….”

Strike 1: The tuition cap exists without any proper regulation or means of enforcement.

Strike 2: Institutions need only rebrand a program to get around the cap.

Strike 3: Institutions are free to create huge new fees by labelling them something other than “tuition.”

So next time the B.C. government brags about its tuition fee cap or you see the premier on TV talking about keeping college tuition fees low, know that you’re being lied to.

Simka Marshall is chairwoman of the Canadian Federation of Students — British Columbia.