Two students have launched a class-action lawsuit against Ontario colleges, alleging the institutions illegally imposed fees for the use of basic services to circumvent a two-year tuition freeze.

Tuition rates at post-secondary institutions remained the same for two years starting in 2004 in an effort to provide financial relief for cash-strapped students.

But Amanda Hassum and Dan Roffey allege colleges skirted the restriction by charging students extra fees to use school computers and libraries.

Under the provincial government policy, collecting additional money to fund capital projects or core academic operations covered by tuition is banned.

Despite that, the students claim it has become a "universal practice" for colleges to collect such fees.

"The fact that you said, 'Look, we've got great locks on the front door,' is meaningless, because everyone knows that everyone's just going to go around through the back," said the students' lawyer, Doug Elliott.

Hassum, a student in the advertising program at Conestoga College in Kitchener, says fees to use her college computers add up to about $214 a year, or eight per cent of her total fees.

"I am using a computer lab all day long in my course. I spend at least five to eight hours a day. Some of the fees appear to be too iffy in my mind."

Roffey, a student at Toronto's George Brown College, pays a similar amount. He gets slapped with a $213 charge that the institution calls an administration fee, but it goes toward paying for computers, he says.

With about 14,000 full-time students, the fee puts nearly $3 million annually into the school coffers.

The $200-million class-action lawsuit against the province's 24 community colleges of applied arts and technology has not yet been certified, and none of the claims have been proven in court. 

If successful, the suit could benefit students across Ontario with a return of charged fees.

Elliott is also threatening to seek an injunction to stop colleges from imposing the fees beginning at the start of the school year this fall.