For Immediate Release
November 25, 2025 – VICTORIA, BC/Unceded Territories of the lekwungen-speaking Peoples, including the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, and the W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples.
Today, the Minister of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, Jessie Sunner, announced a rushed review of British Columbia’s public post-secondary education system. BC students are extremely concerned that this review will is not a meaningful process and is being used to justify predetermined cuts at the expense of students.
Student leaders stressed that the review process is too short, too opaque, and risks being used to justify cuts, mergers, and tuition increases that will make post-secondary education less accessible across the province. The four-month review timeline includes the December winter break, drastically limiting opportunities for students, workers, and communities to participate in any consultations in a meaningful way.
“Students are already visiting campus food banks in record numbers, juggling multiple jobs, and skipping meals just to afford tuition,” said Solomon Yi-Kieran, Vice-President External Affairs of the AMS. “A review that ends in higher tuition, fewer services, or shuttered campuses is not a neutral policy choice. It is a direct attack on students who are barely hanging on. Given the government’s role in underfunding this system, launching a rushed, opaque review without committing to protect the 2% tuition cap is a farce that students will not accept.”
At the center of students’ concerns is the potential scrapping of the 2% cap on annual domestic tuition increases, established through the 2005 Tuition Limit Policy. Student leaders emphasized that this cap is one of the few protections that keeps public education within reach for low- and middle-income British Columbians.
“The 2% cap on domestic tuition is not a luxury for students, it is a basic safeguard that keeps public education from becoming a privilege reserved only for the wealthy,” said Kevin Root, Chairperson of the Alliance of BC Students. “The last time government removed this protection, some schools doubled or tripled tuition. Repeating this, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, would push post-secondary education completely out of reach for thousands of students and deepen inequality across the province.”
The Alliance of BC Students (ABCS) and the Alma Mater Society (AMS) of UBC Vancouver, along with nine student associations representing nearly half of all post-secondary students in BC, addressed the media today on the steps of the BC Legislature in response to Minister Sunner’s newly announced review.
They pointed to decades of chronic underfunding as the root cause of the current crisis, noting that institutions increasingly rely on exorbitantly high international student tuition to balance their budgets. With federal limits now placed on international enrolment, that fragile funding model is collapsing from years of government neglect, exposing the depth of the provincial funding gap.
“Instead of asking which students can be charged more, the province should be asking how to finally fund public post-secondary education properly,” added Root. “No institution should have to balance its books by gouging either domestic or international students. Public education is a public good, and it should be treated that way.
Student unions are calling on the provincial government to:
“Post secondary institutions are engines of BC’s economy and key to training the workforce we need in health care, technology, climate action, journalism, and beyond,” said Yi-Kieran. “Undermining postsecondary education does not build a stronger economy. It shrinks opportunity, weakens communities, and erodes the very future government says it wants to secure. This is the opposite of Building BC, Building Canada, and strengthening BC’s economy.”
Student leaders affirmed that they will continue to organize on campuses and in communities across BC to demand that any response to the current crisis protects access, quality, and affordability for all students.
About the Alliance of BC Students
The Alliance of British Columbia Students is a non-partisan society of student associations representing undergraduate and graduate students from across the province that advocates on issues that affect post-secondary students in British Columbia.
About the Alma Mater Society of UBC Vancouver
The Alma Mater Society of UBC Vancouver is the student union representing more than 60,000 students at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus. The AMS provides advocacy, services, and programming to improve student life and advance students’ interests at the university, municipal, provincial, and federal levels.
Student societies standing in solidarity included: Capilano Students’ Union, Graduate Students Society of UBC Vancouver, Royal Roads University Student Association, Simon Fraser Student Society, Students’ Union Okanagan of UBC, UFV Student Union Society, University of Victoria Students’ Society
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