The University of Alberta is trying to address a problem that has been plaguing its students for years: students are spending more time partying and not paying attention to their finances.
On Monday, the university announced that all student financial aid will be reviewed, and that students will be required to report all parties attended.
It also said all students attending the fall and spring semester will be subject to an audit.
“This audit will include any parties that are scheduled for that semester and any parties they have attended,” the university said in a news release.
“We will also be asking students to be as responsible as possible with their funds.”
In an interview with CBC News, university president David Wilcox said he’s been trying to work with students on this issue for years.
“What we need to do is to make sure that students are making good decisions and that they are spending their money wisely,” Wilcox told CBC News.
“So we have to make some changes, to make it more accessible to students and make sure they have the best information possible.”
Wilcox has said that there’s a need for an audit of all university student loans to ensure that students don’t miss out on any financial aid.
“If you’re an undergraduate and you don’t know where your money is going to be going, you have a huge impact on how much you can get out of your education,” Wilcox said.
“I don’t want to do anything that’s going to put a damper on that.”
He also said that the university has to do more to protect students from financial mismanagement.
“You can’t go out of a job, you can’t work for less than the minimum wage,” Wilkins said.
The university’s financial aid audit was announced on Monday.
It’s one of several steps that have been taken by the university in the wake of recent sexual assault scandals that rocked its campus.
Wilcox says students will have to report parties at all times and will be asked to sign a confidentiality agreement when they attend them.
The new guidelines come after an online survey of more than 1,000 university students, including some who had attended parties at the university, showed that about 90 per cent of respondents said they had gone out of their way to avoid going to parties.
University of Calgary student Rachel O’Brien said the audit was important.
“For years, I’ve been asking myself how can I pay my bills and how can my university provide me with the financial support I need, and I’m getting a lot of questions about how to do that, so this is a step in the right direction,” she said.
Student groups have also been trying for years to have financial aid audited, but that hasn’t happened.
Last year, a group called “Student Financial Aid Audit,” which had been trying unsuccessfully to have its members’ loans audited by the government, said that it would be launching a new campaign.
“In the past, there have been two audits that have come out of the universities,” said student advocacy director Sarah Anderson.
“And the government hasn’t really done anything about it.
It was just a lot more pressure to go through the process.
Now we have this new push, we need the university to actually do something.”
The university said that all financial aid is reviewed in consultation with the university’s administration, which has been working with students and parents to identify any financial issues that may have been identified and help students with financial aid in the future.
