University students face higher costs

The cost of attending a Canadian university continues to increase well beyond the rate of inflation, with undergraduates paying an average offour per cent more for the current school year, and graduate students paying 6.6 per cent more, according to Statistics Canada.

Canada's rate of inflation over the past year was 1.8 per cent.

Undergraduate students in Ontario face the highest tuition costs, averaging $6,307, a 5.4 per cent increase over last year. In March, the Ontario government promised to keep tuition fee increases withinfive per cent for the next two years.

Graduate students in Ontario are facing an even greater increase, at 10.6 per cent, bringing average annual tuition to $6,917.

Among undergraduate programs, the most expensive program was dentistry, with average fees of $14,701, while medical undergrads paid $10,244 and pharmacy students $9,250.

Business courses are by far the most expensive graduate programs, with an executive MBA costing an average of $28,773.

Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador have the lowest tuition costs for both graduate and undergraduate students.

A tale of two rankings

Two major rankings of universities around the world have just come out, with quite different evaluations of Canada's top schools among them. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010-2011 and the QS University rankings released data on global universities, with the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia and McGill University all falling within the top 45 schools.

However, while the University of Waterloo, University of Calgary, the University of Western Ontario and Queen's University made the QS list, these institutions fell out of the Top 200 rankings in the Times list. The reason, according to the Times, was a new methodology that put less emphasis on scientific research and focused on a greater equalization of a school's reputation and its performance measured through a number of indicators.

These include research, teaching, citations and the international mix of students.