The Alberta government is sending the University of Alberta back to the drawing board on its proposed tuition hikes, saying more student consultation is needed.

university’s proposals would see increases for new students ranging from 17 per cent in an undergraduate medical laboratory science program to 104 per cent in a graduate counselling psychology program beginning in the fall of 2022. One proposal would see a 45 per cent increase in tuition for the faculty of law’s juris doctor program.

Alberta’s tuition regulations dictate that an institution’s average tuition and apprenticeship fee increases cannot go up by more than seven per cent each year for the next three years, and tuition for any single program can’t go up by more than 10 per cent each year.

Any “exceptional” tuition increases need to be approved by Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides.