Students Lose Right to Opt-Out of Ancillary Fees
This year, students may have noticed that they can no longer opt out of a majority of Lakehead’s ancillary fees, costing nearly an additional one thousand dollars on tuition payments. In past years, students could obtain a refund on the fees for services they did not intend to use. This year that will not be an option.
In January 2019, the “Choose my Ancillary Fees,” or “Student Choice Initiative,” was proudly announced by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. The framework gave students the necessary right to choose the services that they paid for and discouraged the implementation of excessive, largely unusable non-essential service fees. Recently, this measure was quashed by Ontario’s Divisional Court and denied any appeals. Below is a list of Orillia’s now-mandatory ancillary fees and their prices:
Computer Enhancement Fee: $25
Canadian Federation of Students: $18.18
LUSU Medical Insurance: $392.50
LUSU U-Pass Fee Orillia: $145
WUSC World University Service Canada: $7
LUSU Capital Fund: $54
Student Recreation and Wellness: $101.79
Health Service Support: $66.89
LUSU Activity Fee: $145
Total: $955.36
Conversely, many student unions celebrated the court’s decision, stating, “ The SCI was never about saving students money; it was an attempt to silence and defund students’ unions and groups that are critical of and hold the government accountable while providing support for students’ well-being on and off-campus.” By making non-essential fees mandatory, services do not lose too much funding, which poses a risk of cutting services.
For students with mandatory tuition and textbooks to purchase, however, they seldom have an extra thousand dollars to pay for fees they will never use. The LUSU U-Pass Bus Fee (Orillia), for example, can only be used within the city of Orillia. The problem with this is that Lakehead Orillia is a commuter school, which means only a very small fraction of the student population could actually use the pass to get to and from school. The rest, even if they were even utilizing bus services, must still pay $10 for every ride to and from their home city in addition to having to pay for the Orillia Bus Pass. One student told the Argus: “Now I have to pay $145 for a bus pass that I won’t be using in addition to the $242 I have to pay for parking, not to mention tuition just went up. I was relying on steady tuition and the ability to opt-out as I have in past years.”
One silver lining, however, is that students can still save $392.50 by applying for a refund on health insurance. You are eligible to apply so long as you are receiving health insurance from another source, such as parental figures. Though it is mandatory to pay the fee upfront, students can opt out within the period of September 1 to September 30 by going to lusu.ca.
As of now, ancillary fees will remain a mandatory part of paying tuition, so make sure to budget for them in the coming years!