ST. JOHN’S, N.L. - As students settle into a new year at Memorial University of Newfoundland, student campaigner Nicholas Keough is resuming one of the province’s long-running political fights. Keough is back on campus, collecting signatures on a new petition to again freeze tuition rates in the province — part of an on-again, off-again tuition saga that has vexed students and preoccupied politicians and university officials for years. Tuition rates were frozen at the university between 1999 and 2021 — fixing the yearly cost of a full course load at under $3,000. When the freeze was lifted in 2022, fees more than doubled, hitting $6,750 for 10 courses. Politicians then reinstated a new freeze in 2026, telling university officials to look elsewhere to find budget balance. “I know students that had to take on extra jobs to pay the increase tuition fees, who were really shocked by this increase,” Keough said. “For a number of years, students and parents had been saving up, who lived in this province, and they were suddenly unable to afford their tuition fees.” Although Memorial University officials say their new tuition fees are still among the lowest in the country, that difference is not as profound as it was in 2021. And as Keough tries to rally signatures to pressure provincial officials to hold the line again for the next school year, he’s facing headwinds: tuition rates across the country are rising at a rate that’s outpacing the inflation rates for other goods. When accounting for tuition and other mandatory fees, the average yearly cost of an undergraduate program for Canadian students rose from $7,915 in 2022 to $9,292 in 2026, according to Statistics Canada. It’s a growth of about 4.1 per cent each year. Graduate program costs for Canadian students similarly rose — although to a smaller degree. The average program cost $8,400 in 2022 and $9,273 in 2026. The agency excludes certain programs, like master of business administration, from the calculation as they would heavily skew results. “Governments are trying to pull away from heavily subsidizing universities and colleges across the country,” Keough said. He pointed to Ontario, where provincial officials lifted a tuition freeze earlier in 2026. “I think they’re not understanding how valuable and essential education and post-secondary education is to society.” Erika Merschrod, the president of Memorial University’s faculty association, agrees, adding that federal and provincial governments aren’t keeping up with the funding commitments that would be required to keep tuition stable. “I think the challenge in Canada is that the post-secondary education, under the broad umbrella of education, is in the provincial domain, and so it allows the federal government to go, ‘oh, not our problem,’” she said. “But really, we need federal and provincial support of post-secondary education, because our work at other universities really supports and infiltrates every sector of society.” Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial funding for Memorial University rose from $311 million in 2025 to $330 million in 2026, a 6.2 per cent increase. The university’s faculty of medicine, which is subsidized separately, received a similar increase. Operational funding for the university rose 3.9 per cent in 2025 from 2024 — and 2.1 per cent for the medical school. Rising tuition costs are stressing parents, according to Andrew Lo, chief executive officer of the financial planning firm Embark. Embark advertises education savings plans for parents and families. “If you intend to stay in a dorm, that’s really skyrocketing,” said Lo. “It’s got to a point where I think some families are discouraged. We find that they’re discouraged from opening an RESP (Registered Education Savings Plan) account, because they don’t think they could get there.” Keough said Newfoundland and Labrador is still lagging behind in educational attainment — which is part of the reason he’s urging provincial officials to at least hold their tuition freeze, if not step up funding to lower costs even further. “I think, even though it’s still relatively inexpensive compared to other places in the country, we definitely still need that,” he said. “We need it to be accessible to for everyone. And even this increase over the last few years has prevented a lot of students from being able to access post-secondary.”
