Did uToronto reveal Ontario's new tuition framework?

The University of Toronto revealed its tuition plan for next year at a recent meeting of their Business Board – the body which advises the university’s Governing Council on financial matters.

The University of Toronto student newspaper The Varsityreports:

Tuition fees will increase by an average of 4.31 per cent for domestic students and six per cent for international students, according to the tuition fee schedule presented to the Business Board on Monday. The hikes will go to Governing Council for final approval.

A 4.5 per cent hike will be applied to most undergrad programs, and four per cent to most grad programs. Exceptions are the eight per cent tuition increases for students entering pharmacy, engineering, dentistry, and law.

The University of Toronto is either guessing or has been told that the “Reaching Higher Two” tuition framework will be the same as “Reaching One.” There is a great administrative cost to initiating and completing the process of approving increases to tuition making it unlikely that any university – let alone Ontario’s de-facto flagship – would proceed without clear direction from the Council of Ontario Universities which receives confidential information from the provincial government.

It appears that Ontario’s new tuition framework will be a continuation of the present one.

The overall tuition increase university wide will continue to be capped at five per cent. Due to the allowance for eight percent increases in first year tuition which are carried forward into subsequent years, tuition in Ontario will continue to spiral upwards at more than triple the rate of inflation.