With zero consultation, zero collaboration, and zero advance notice, UBC’s transition to Workday Student has fundamentally broken how distance learners are assessed fees.
This is not only about the U-Pass. Online-only students are being charged campus-based AMS fees they were never consulted about, and a transit pass they cannot use, because of an administrative recoding of who counts as a "distance" student.
Because of that change, thousands of online-only students are now being charged campus-based AMS fees and the mandatory U-Pass fee. The university’s solution is a broken timeline that forces you to foot the bill:
- UBC tuition and fees are due in early September.
- The AMS U-Pass Exemption portal does not even open until September 8, 2026.
- The AMS requires up to 25 business days to process an exemption.
- If you don’t pay upfront, you face late fees and financial holds. When you are finally approved in October, your money isn’t refunded to your bank—it is held as a credit on your Workday account. The university is essentially forcing distance learners to provide a $1 million interest-free loan to cover an administrative glitch.
Evidence
This was not an unforeseen accident. AMS Council knew the scale of this change in November 2025, and they voted on it.
On November 5, 2025, AMS Council amended fee definitions after the move from the Student Service Centre to Workday Student. The Ubyssey reported that the new, wider definition of "distance education" had made "just under 5,000 students entirely fee-exempt."
Then-AMS President Riley Huntley said exemptions should be based on delivery mode — online, in-person, or hybrid — rather than Workday’s default. Without a change, he said, the switch would risk "slamming a whole bunch of students with $800 in fees, which is not our intention either."
Council then passed a code change to introduce reduced fees for online members. Huntley said the plan was to charge the base membership fee of $51. Then-VP Finance Gagan Parmar described the code change as a first step toward rewriting a 21-year-old fee agreement with UBC, because definitions for certain exemptions had "changed drastically, like who is considered an online versus hybrid student."
Those officers are no longer in those seats. After the March 2026 AMS elections, Dylan Evans is President and Nathan Shack is VP Finance. The fee structure they inherited is the one Council passed last November, without consulting the online students who are now being billed.
They knew about 5,000 students as far back as November 2025. They restructured fees for online learners. They did not consult those students, and they did not have a working U-Pass exemption process in place before this year’s fees came due.
Read the full report: AMS Council talks federal budget, hears updates on campus planning (The Ubyssey, November 10, 2025).
Join the Coalition
We are organizing to demand immediate fee reversals, a halt to charging campus-based fees to online-only students without consultation, and a permanent fix to the Workday assessment coding. To keep this coalition strictly for impacted online learners, we operate on a zero-trust model. You must verify your status by providing an email and a redacted screenshot of your Workday fee assessment showing the incorrect charges.