On July 17th, NAIT stated something important on their staff website. They talked about a new “Technology fee” that all students will have to pay. They also said that NAITSA, the group that speaks for all students, asked that this fee not be used to pay for software, and that because of this, some software won’t be available anymore. This is very misleading. Their wording makes it seem like NAITSA has caused the elimination of software services like LinkedIn Learning and Grammarly, and that’s wrong.
In our province, student groups like NAITSA have to agree to new fees like this. NAITSA agreed to this new Technology fee because it will improve access to campus wifi and loanable technology for students who borrow computers. Agreeing that this was important is not equivalent to saying the software services are not.
For the last three years, NAIT has suggested many new fees, and almost all of them were denied by your student representatives. NAIT warned them that if certain fees weren’t agreed to, some services might be reduced or even stopped. To be clear, NAIT is now following through on these warnings.
NAITSA wants students to have access to software like Grammarly, LinkedIn Learning, Mind Tools, and Nimbus Learning. But they don’t think students should have to pay more for it. This is especially true after tuition, the money you pay for school, went up by 7% each year for the last three years. NAITSA is aware that NAIT receives less money from the government that it used to, but with tuition going up by 21% in three years, and 5.5% more this coming year, students are already paying enough. To ask students to pay even more money and threaten to take away services if they don’t, and then blame students for these services being taken away, is not right. Students are paying more money, but getting less in return. This is because of what NAIT did, not the students.
On July 26th NAITSA’s statement to staff was removed from the NAIT staff news page.
At this time NAITSA continues to support Nimbus on campus as it will continue until at least August 2025, at which time the contract will be up for renewal.
