Any tuition fee increase at MUN won't happen until 2016

Graduate and international students will likely pay more for tuition fees at Memorial University, but changes won't come into effect until the next academic year. 

Noreen Golfman, Memorial's provost and vice-president (academic), said due to the lateness of the provincial budget's release in the academic year, students won't see any changes until 2016.

Memorial's operating grant was cut by $20 million in Newfoundland and Labrador's 2015 budget. Premier Paul Davis says government has asked every department to find ways to better deliver services, including the university.

If the university does approve a 30-per cent increase, Golfman said international and graduate students still pay "radically" lower costs than the rest of Canada. 

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She said the university will not hike tuition for undergraduate Canadian students.

"The bulk of our enrolment is undergraduate, domestic, we want to protect those students and especially those Canadian and Newfoundland and Labrador students as much as possible," Golfman told The St. John's Morning Show.

'We're looking very hard'

"We're going to have to eat it, we're going to have it eat that amount of money," Golfman said, referring to the $20 million. "We're looking very hard."

Golfman said the provincial government "modelled" what the loss would look like for the university.

"It knew it would be 6.7 million dollars ... so that figure didn't come out of the air by magic, they knew that, they knew what the costs would be for a tuition hike to those groups and that's what it was."

The Board of Regents will meet in July to vote on any change in financial structure.