Full-time undergraduate students at Canadian universities are paying an average of $4,524 in tuition fees this year — up from $1,185 at the end of the 1980s — but may take comfort from a slowdown in fee increases, Statistics Canada reports.

The latest figure is 2.8 per cent above last year's average ($4,400), which in turn was up 3.2 per cent from 2005-2006, the federal agency said in a report issued Thursday.

Students protest rising tuition costs on Parliament Hill in February as others in about 30 cities stage rallies calling for affordable post-secondary education.
(Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

The figures don't account for inflation. 

In the 1990s, undergraduate tuition fees swelled at an annual average rate of more than 9.6 per cent, but the increases have slowed to an average of 3.8 per cent since 2000, the federal agency said.

The fees are still rising faster than the Consumer Price Index, but the gap has narrowed recently, it said.

Law, medicine are priciest fields

Not surprisingly, medical students are paying the highest undergraduate tuition this year, $9,937 on average, up 2.9 per cent from 2006-2007. Law students are paying $7,334, up 2.5 per cent over the previous period.

The lowest fees are in education ($3,473, up three percent), agriculture ($3,963, up 2.4 per cent) and architecture ($3,957, up 3.1 per cent). The architecture category includes such allied fields as urban planning, architectural history, landscape architecture and architectural technology.

In postgraduate studies, the highest fees for Canadian full-time students are in business ($13,702, down 7.9 per cent from 2006-2007) and medicine ($7,168, up 2.8 per cent). The study does not speculate on why fees shrank in business, the only field with a lower average.

Compulsory extra fees are on the rise

While tuition increases have slowed, universities are not shy about tacking on additional compulsory fees for such things as recreation and athletics, student health services and student associations.

On average, students are paying $663 in such fees in the current academic year, up 10 per cent from $603 last year.

The extra fees now make up 12.8 per cent of the total fees an undergraduate student must pay, up from 10.7 per cent at the end of the 1990s.

Nova Scotia the costliest province

On a province-by-province basis, the highest undergraduate charges for tuition only were in Nova Scotia ($5,878), New Brunswick ($5,733) and Ontario ($5,381). The lowest were in Quebec ($2,025) and Newfoundland and Labrador ($2,633).

Quebec's figure was less than half the $4,524 national average even after a longstanding tuition freeze for residents was lifted earlier this year. Quebec and Nova Scotia have separate fees structures for non-resident students, so in-province students tend to pay less than the statistical average figures.

The biggest tuition increases were in New Brunswick and Quebec, where fees rose 4.8 per cent, and in Ontario, where they grew 4.4 per cent. Fees fell in two provinces — Prince Edward Island (down 9.8 per cent) and Nova Scotia (down 8.5 per cent) — and were virtually unchanged in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan.

Tuition fees for foreign students rose in all provinces except Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. Increases ranged from highs of 6.2 per cent in Quebec and 5.6 per cent in Saskatchewan, to lows of 1.7 percent in Manitoba and 0.2 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador.