Photo: Bill Everitt

Even the hint of lower tuition fees in the US has local college students salivating.

US President Barack Obama recently announced a plan to eliminate the first two years of tuition fees for community college students.

“It’s a sad day for our province when we are looking to the US for progressive, forward-thinking education policy,” said Chelsea Grisch, chairperson of the Okanagan College Students' Union. “The future for post-secondary education is the removal of financial barriers, and in BC, Premier Clark is running in the complete opposite direction of progress.”

President Obama’s plan to make the first two years of community college tuition fee free is an extension of existing initiatives at the state level.

One such example, the Tennessee Promise scholarship program, offers up-front, needs-based grants to Tennessee students that covers the full cost of tuition fees for two years of college.

"I would absolutely love that," said Stephanie Baziuk, vice-president of the Enactus group at Okanagan College. "There's a lot of students who take out student loans and they end up really far in debt after they grad and I think it would give a lot of people that extra chance."

Baziuk said cutting tuition fees in this way could open post-secondary to a larger group of people.

"It would be beneficial, too, for those people that are thinking of careers that take eight years of school," she said. "If a student is looking to becoming a doctor, you're deciding that you're going to be paying those fees every year for the next 8 to 10 years. If you can eliminate two of those, you're potentially introducing a whole lot more people to the workforce in those different capacities."

Brittany Nygaard, a first year nursing student at Okanagan College said having the first two years free would ease her debt burden and open doors for other students and families.

"If I wasn't able to get a student loan, I wouldn't be able to go to school," she said. "There are a lot of people that are very talented and very smart but they have no hope of going because they can't afford it. Scholarships can only do so much and only so many people have access to those scholarships."

"It would probably heighten how many specialized people we have in our workforce."

Brittani Sagert and her friend Amy Callioux, both nursing unit clerk students at OC, said two years of no fees would be a big deal.

"Our program is one year for $5,000, so that's a good chunk of money," Sagert said.

Sara Burton, another nursing unit assistant student, wondered if the US could really afford to offer such a plan.

"Of course I would love for my schooling to be paid for, that would be sweet," she said. "But I feel like it would just put the US more in debt; now they're going to pay for all these people to go to school?"



British Columbia had an up-front, needs based grant system until 2003 when it was eliminated by the BC Liberals government.

"The BC Liberal’s most recent decision, the implementing tuition fees for adult basic education programs, will apply new university-level fees to high school courses and create financial barriers to adults returning to school to complete high school-equivalence programs," said Brianne Berchowitz, executive director of the Okanagan College Students' Union.

“BC has a projected budget surplus in excess of $400 million; there is simply no justification for cutting funding to basic education and asking students and families to pay more,” said Zach Crispin, chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students.

