Last month's President's Column chronicled the ravages of underfunding to our universities over the last 10 years and the redirection of partially restored funds away from core institutional academic operations. Levels of tuition fees and student debt were categorized as at "the breaking point."

Government underfunding of universities has resulted in reduced numbers of teaching and research personnel, increased class sizes and compromised infrastructure. In many institutions cuts to or near the bone have already occurred. Generally, asymmetrical in application, these cuts have adversely limited the effectiveness of core faculties to deliver their programs. Despite the strength and resilience of other institutional components and programs, the ability of our universities and colleges to fulfill their community mission has been adversely affected with erosion of the core faculties.

Frustrated administrators are driven to consider implementation of extreme measures to boost university revenues in order to address loss of effectiveness. It is advanced that tuition fees need to be drastically increased to meet the funding crisis. It is argued that such a measure will ensure quality education and promote societal ability to be Ôcompetitive' in the knowledge-driven economy. Such drastic increases in student fees are foretold in "deregulation" of tuition. In deregulation, government allows universities free rein to levy tuition. Such action functionally translates to institutional ability to set tuition at any level free of government approval or control.

Deregulation of tuition has been widespread among professional faculties in the past few years. In that short time there have been increases of 40 to 700 per cent. There is strong reason to believe that drastic tuition increases naturally succeed deregulation. Tuition deregulation across all university faculties is thus far unprecedented in Canadian institutions. Currently deregulation of student tuition is sought by administrators at Queen's University, despite strong protest by students and faculty members. The potential domino effect of such action across all universities is widely recognized.

Negative impact of tuition deregulation recounted in local and national media includes reduced accessibility to post-secondary education with exception of the wealthy, scholarship or bursary recipients, and the future debt-ridden. Data clearly show that participation in university programs in high tuition deregulated schools is increasingly being limited to students from affluent families.

Assuming high debt loads carries a repayment burden, which often requires an exodus from lower paying critically important positions to higher paying jobs. Drastic tuition increases have begun to reverse advances made in equity for women and the underprivileged in professional fields requiring intensive university training. Students and others decry a two-tiered "have" and "have not" system of universities resulting from excessive tuition costs.

It is interesting to note the ratio of operating revenues assumed by tuition income since the early 1990s. In the previous decade at my own institution, the University of Manitoba, tuition income as a proportion of the operating budget went from 15 per cent to 24 per cent; at Queen's from 18 per cent to 37 per cent, and at Calgary, from 19 per cent to more than 40 per cent. A good bit of the increase most probably occurred without deregulation. Where are we headed in university funding scenarios? Are massive tuition hikes the best way there?'

Tuition deregulation takes us away from our core values of perseverance through co-operation, inclusiveness and equalization. Inspired and blind-sided by the rush to fund world class institutions at any cost, deregulation of tuition and massive tuition increases enhance and accelerate the disconnect between our universities and the communities and country which they serve. Local institutions become foreign territory. Crushing tuition levels are onerous for students and a recipe for promoting creeping privatization of our universities.

Massive fees debilitate our students and the deleterious result is socio-magnified at every level of society into the future. Deregulation is not a solution to the funding crisis in post-secondary institutions.