The Camosun College board of governors approved a new Student Services fee at its meeting on Monday, February 3. The fee, effective September of this year, will cost each full-time student $52.50 per semester; part-time students will pay $26.25 per semester. Details on the fee are still being finalized.
The fee will be used for services and programs led by the college’s Student Services department. According to the college meeting agenda, the fees will go toward, among other things, “services and programs related to the physical and psychological health and well-being of students,” “social, recreational, and cultural activities and programs,” academic and career planning, learning supports, campus life and engagement, and financial aid and awards.
The college has been working on the fee details with the Camosun College Student Society (CCSS), with the two organizations having monthly meetings for almost two years to figure out details.
“The college approached us in relation to instituting a Student Services Fee to cover those non-academic services,” says CCSS executive director Michel Turcotte. “We’re pretty much the only institution in British Columbia that doesn’t have that type of fee currently, and it was felt that the services were needing that sort of a boost.”
CCSS external executive Fillette Umulisa says that the two-year process of getting this fee together started with input from Camosun students.
“Student feedback led to this,” says Umulisa. “They had students tell them that it wasn’t enough, the waiting list was too long for services like counselling, the library was only open until a certain time when students need it, so they felt the need to increase those services. So they did an electronic survey in 2018, and the results were overwhelmingly in favour of increasing the services that are provided on both campuses. That’s how we got here.”
Camosun vice president of student experience Heather Cummings says the college is very excited about the fee, and is also excited about the Student Advisory Committee that is being set up around the fee.
“We’re very, very excited,” she says. “As excited as anyone can be when you introduce a fee for students. We’re excited about the opportunities that the fee is presenting us, in terms of being able to invest further in services. We’re excited that we’re going to be able to be responsive, and we’re also very excited about how we set up this fee with the Student Advisory Committee.”
What is being proposed currently is that the committee be made up of, according to Cummings, “a couple of college representatives as well as a number of student society representatives, and a number of students at large.”
“The thought was to basically invite students to identify themselves as someone who wants to be on the committee,” she says. “We’re only going to meet a couple times a year but it really is just to check in—how did we spend the money? Where did we spend the money? What are the numbers? Are students using those services? Is that the right service for us to be investing in? Where are students still seeing some challenges in terms of accessing support?”
The CCSS will receive six percent of the total fees collected each fiscal year to go toward existing CCSS programs that are in line with the new fee’s objectives. Turcotte—who says that the CCSS will hold the college accountable for where the money goes and will have regular reviews to see that data—says that this will help avoid the college and the CCSS offering the same services.
“One of the things that I’ve noticed in looking at these fees across the province is that sometimes when institutions bring in a fee and it hasn’t been quite as organized in how to do it, then they’re looking at how to spend it, often the student society and institution end up in a bit of conflict, because they’re trying to operate in the same areas. So part of the discussions we had in the agreement was that we wanted to avoid the duplication of services, because if you’re going to collect a fee from students, you want to make sure that you’re being as efficient as possible in as many ways, and duplication never provides financial efficiency. The six percent we get is actually to enhance some of the related services we offer while ensuring that we’re not duplicating services provided by the college and vice versa.”
First-year University Transfer student Luke Leger says he is okay with paying the fee as long as it’s implemented properly.
“I feel like it would be useful if everything’s being provided well,” he says. “I think it’s a small fee to pay for mental health and physical health; I don’t know what that pertains to exactly.”
Leger adds that while he sees the potential for the fee to be a good thing, he feels it should be optional, like dental and extended health is.
“It’s not essential. Yes, taking care of your mental health is very good for you, and your physical health,” he says, adding that students should have the right to choose.
First-year Early Learning and Care student Hailey Flader says that the fee looks good on paper but it’s one of those things you need to see in action and notes that she knows students who do find fees difficult financially.
“It seems reasonable,” she says. “Myself, I don’t pay for my education, but I know that a lot of my friends do and they struggle with the already [existing] student fees,” she says.
Flader says that it’s the little things that add up when it comes to finances, so she as well mentions that it could be an idea to make it an optional fee depending on the resources you intend to use.
“People like me would be a part of it. I wouldn’t mind,” she says. “But I know some people really struggle paycheque to paycheque.”
First-year student Patricia Sterling—who has not yet chosen a program, but studies psychology—says that it’s a reasonable fee considering it’s covering services students need.
“They need to be funded if students are taking advantage of the services,” she says. “I think it makes sense.”
Cummings says that the college always considers whether it is possible to facilitate a way for students to opt out of a fee, but with that comes other challenges.
“When we create the ability to opt out, that means that a smaller number of students would be contributing to cover those services. We have no ability at this point to tell students, ‘You can’t access the service,’ so then it would end up being subsidized by a few and used by the mass. I guess my simplest answer is when you apply the fee to everybody it creates more affordable access. So for $52.50 a full-time student literally will have increased access to services that would cost exponentially more if they were to trying to access them on their own, off campus, or if it was a fee for service. So it is the drawback to having that type of principle going into fees, and I do appreciate students that wish that was an option, it just currently is not the option.”
One way that students who are concerned about the fee not being optional could have had their say would have been a referendum to let the students decide if they want this fee or not. Turcotte says that this is something that was discussed, but in the end the college decided to make the decision to implement the fee.
“Yes, it was discussed,” he says. “Various options were discussed, including the idea of having a referendum on this. In British Columbia, there’s two ways of implementing fees on students. One way is doing it through your student societies, and you have to do a referendum in that case, or the institutions can do it and get the Ministry [of Advanced Education, Skills and Training] to approve. Ultimately, the institution decided that it would be better to have this as an institutional fee, and that’s their choice, and considering most of the money is going to enhance their programs and services, in some ways that may make more practical sense in this particular instance.”
Cummings says that while the college didn’t do a referendum, it did still get student input to how the fee will be implemented.
“As I understand it, a referendum was not a requirement for us to implement this fee, but we did want students to be consulted, and we did want to have a process by which there was some accountability around such a fee,” she says. “Some of the things you look for through a referendum we thought we would build in within the consultation process we did as well as the MOU [memorandum of understanding]. So in that way we’ve kind of made sure that students are the voice behind how we implement the fee, and that there’s processes built in place to get that feedback from them. So it’s my understanding that that’s why we went the route of the MOU, so that we were getting that type of feedback from students but we were also creating the accountability in the fee.”
Turcotte—who feels this could be used as a model for similar fees in BC—admits that it’s never easy for student societies to want to accept the idea of more student fees, and he says that it’s “unusual” for a student society to work this closely with its students’ institution, but he feels there are useful tradeoffs on both sides.
“This is a brand-new experience for us,” says Turcotte. “We’ve never quite been sitting on this side of the table or having this experience. When this conversation started, we were left with certain choices, and compared to how it works at most other institutions, I think students will ultimately benefit more from the model we’ve adopted at Camosun, because of that level of cooperation and mutual respect between both the college and student society that will lead to greater accountability in how this fee works out in the end.”
However, Cummings says that working closely with student societies is par for the course for her.
“I’m not used to it working any other way,” she says. “This is the model I used in my previous life at another institution. I didn’t negotiate fees like this without this type of partnership, and it was a partnership that we had an MOU on; we would have a Student Advisory Committee providing us constant feedback. It was great, so, yeah, I know it’s new for Camosun and folks here, but it’s not new for me. This is just my way of doing business.”