NAIT’s Board of Governors unanimously approved Exceptional Tuition Increases (ETIs) for nine programs, with an average increase of 89 per cent. The Government of Alberta will now review the proposals. If approved, the tuition would increase for students starting in 2026/27. Current students will “remain under their existing tuition rates,” NAIT told the Nugget via email.
The nine proposals are all quality-based, meaning the increased revenue from tuition would “improve the quality in a way that justifies the increase,” according to Alberta’s Tuition Framework.
NAIT cites four key areas for program investment
Patti Hergott, associate vice-president of academic quality and operational excellence, told the Board on Dec. 19 that the increases focus on four main areas: modernization of curriculum, simulation capacity, new student support in labs and educational technology.
Modernization of curriculum would include the movement to an annual quality assurance process, digital tools and use of AI. It also includes how the institution will structure some of their programs, said Hergott.
Much of the focus revolved around simulation and lab support. Simulation capacity would give students opportunities to develop skills before moving into the workplace.
“Sometimes students aren’t exposed to things that they’ll see right away, just by the number of opportunities they might have,” said Hergott. “Simulation allows us to expound on all of those.”
New student support in labs would introduce “non-capital, mostly positions” such as educational lab techs, support for Work Integrated Learning and program advising.
ETIs will also support capital educational technology, like new simulators and image review software.
“There’s some huge opportunities from an ethical perspective of what we can do and practice with students before we move into using live animals, live patient care,” said Hergott.
ETIs will also support capital educational technology, like new simulators and image review software.
“There’s some huge opportunities from an ethical perspective of what we can do and practice with students before we move into using live animals, live patient care,” said Hergott. “It really does give the students a sense of what they’re doing.”
ETIs allow tuition hikes beyond normal caps
The Government of Alberta opened applications for exceptional tuition increases in 2025, which allows post-secondary institutions to propose tuition increases beyond the two per cent increase they are limited to each year. Tuition increases also cannot exceed 10 per cent overall, but ETIs do not count towards that limit. If a program has an approved ETI, NAIT could not apply for another for five years.
Institutions can propose student-approved increases, which require approval from the students’ association, or quality-based increases. Initially NAIT had proposed a longer list of programs, including some suggested student-approved increases, but after consultation, NAITSA declined to support any of their proposals. NAIT then pivoted to the final nine increases listed above. About 425 students would be impacted, said Hergott.
“The goal is to continue to ensure that we’re serving future students as well,” Hergott told NAIT’s Board of Governors. She also mentioned the Advanced Education Minister would be looking for documentation regarding NAIT’s consultation with students — which Hergott said she was “most proud of.”
“We were incredibly thorough,” she said. “We met with the NAITSA executives every week for nine weeks.”
NAIT also invited 2,000 students to share feedback on proposed ETIs through focus groups, email and a survey. Hergott told the Board that 335 students responded to their survey — more than they anticipated, “especially given that [current] students won’t be impacted and what other institutions were seeing,” said Hergott.
“This is typically a low response rate of students being engaged throughout the process,” she said. The Board had access to the survey results in their information package, but they were not discussed publicly at the meeting.
The Government of Alberta will decide on the ETIs by the end of February, said Hergott.
NAIT’s website still reflects the current tuition costs; there is no mention of potential ETIs for the nine programs. All individual program webpages do say under the tuition and fee section that the listed numbers are “estimates … based on the tuition rates from the past academic year.”
Rates for 2026/27 will be posted in April.
Featured image: Students in the Denturist Technology program work in class. Photo via NAIT
