Undergraduate tuition is going up two per cent for the 2001-02 academic year.

The increase of $74.70 will mean full-time undergraduate tuition in the Faculties of Humanities, Science, Social Sciences and the Arts & Science program will be $3,931.50.

The two per cent increase will put full-time undergraduate tuition in the School of Business at $4,305.60 and the Faculty of Engineering at $4,675.77. In the Faculty of Health Sciences the increase will put tuition for nursing students at $3,931.50. The fee for medicine students is unchanged at $13,500.

Last year the Board of Governors approved a government-mandated tuition increase over a five-year period for most undergraduate programs.

“McMaster continues to offer tuition fees that are lower than most universities in the province,” said Fred Hall, associate vice-president academic.

The tuition increase revenues will be divided with 40 per cent going to the Faculties for programming, 30 per cent to bursaries and 30 per cent for allocation by the Board's budget committee.

The University will continue to charge a student levy (the amount ranges from $26.10 to $31.02 depending on the Faculty) for the Quality Enhancement Fund. This fund, established last year for a five-year period, supports improvements to facilities that directly affect the quality of academic programs. For example, last year the funds were directed to the University Library and associated learning technologies such as LearnLink.

Graduate tuition fees are frozen at 2000-01 levels, $4,422 annually, except for the School of Business' MBA program. The Board of Governors approved a 25 per cent fee increase for the MBA program to $3,350 per term at its April 26 meeting.

Vishwanath Baba, dean of the School of Business, said the increase in the MBA program fee will be used for a variety of purposes including a faculty hiring initiative devised to increase full-time faculty by 15 to 20 during the next four years to maintain effective student to faculty ratios.

As well, the tuition increase will go towards increasing sessional teaching fees to attract high quality instructors and will aid the school in supporting information technology infrastructure projects and initiatives such as the Educational Trading Centre and the e-commerce annex.

In addition to tuition fee increases, some students will see an increase in the miscellaneous fees they pay depending on the Faculty they belong to and whether they are enrolled full-time or part-time.
For example, full-time undergraduate students will pay about 2.5 per cent more in mandatory supplementary fees for various McMaster Students Union items including the organization fee, the health insurance plan and the University Centre building fee as well as the Ontario Public Interest Research Group fee.

The University collects these fees on behalf of student organizations and student societies and remits the money to them.