The New Brunswick government is pressing forward with its plan to provide free tuition to families with incomes below $60,000.

The Tuition Access Bursary program has many supporters, but also many critics. Though the legislation will allow low-income families to receive free education, it also eliminates tax credits used by middle and higher income families. 

Second-year university student Kyle Rogers is one of the supporters. He says without the tuition waver, he wouldn’t be in school. 

"There are multiple students at this university alone who I have become friends with who have benefitted from this program immensely," said Rogers.

The plan is aimed at increasing the number of low income students attending post-secondary education.

"We support the program because it really is aimed at a group of students who have traditionally not been well-represented among our mix," said University of New Brunswick Saint John vice-president Robert MacKinnon.

The program was unveiled by the New Brunswick government earlier this year. To date, the government has not budged on one of the more controversial aspects of the plan -- the $60,000 benchmark.

"The hard cutoff of $60,000 is slightly unfair to people in the middle income, the higher middle income families," said UNB Saint John student council president Jordan Tracey.

Tracey says more students could benefit if government tweaked the eligibility rules.

"We're pushing them to implement a sliding scale which would incorporate more of the student body instead of limited it to the hard cutoff of $60,000 per year," Tracey said.

But provincial Post-Secondary Education Minister Donald Arsenault says the government wanted to provide immediate tuition relief.

"If we'd adopted a sliding scale, we would only have been able to offer free tuition next fall in 2017,’ he said. “We wanted to make sure those investments are touching New Brunswickers now."

As a result, legislation to implement the new program is being introduced as originally outlined, including the elimination of tax credits enjoyed by students from middle and higher income families.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Mike Cameron.