The provincial government uses the university funding distribution formula to provide grants to Nova Scotia’s 10 universities.
Students Nova Scotia, an alliance of six of the province’s post-secondary student associations, released a report Tuesday that proposed a new approach to planning and funding within the post-secondary education system.
The report’s co-authors Bob Parker and Jonathan Williams of Students Nova Scotia say there’s too much emphasis placed on growing enrolment, while other areas such as teaching quality and student support lack appropriate funding.
The current funding formula by the province allocates 90 per cent of the operating grant on a per-student basis. The remaining 10 per cent is aimed at grants to accommodate special circumstances at universities and universal grants to address specific institutional needs.
The report stated the system has created a strong incentive for universities to increase enrolment at the detriment of other institutions that pursue different priorities or cannot grow as quickly.
“When government funding is limited, as it is now, the formula creates winners and losers,” Parker, Students Nova Scotia’s director of research, said in a release.
“For a university, your financial security depends on registering as many students as possible.”
Students Nova Scotia says it needs to be part of the solution by collaborating openly with the province and universities as full partners in future memoranda of understanding, which set the ground rules for government funding and tuition increases.
The report also called for clear policy objectives when funding is allotted, as well as “transparency and accountability mechanisms” to keep universities on track when trying to reach those objectives.
Cape Breton University vice-president of finance and operations Gordon MacInnis said he was surprised to hear the report call for more oversight in how universities spend government money because there are already measures in place to monitor mismanagement of resources.
“Certainly there has been a lot of disclosure through our discussions with government over recent years in terms of the operating costs of the universities and how universities were spending their money,” he said.
“The government has been presented with projected costs on a multi-year basis.”
The provincial government can also rely on the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission where part of its mandate is to ensure the programming at the university level maintains a level of quality, MacInnis said.
“That mechanism is already in place and has been working for a lot of years now.”
The student population at CBU currently hovers at approximately 3,300 to 3,400 students.
The memorandum of understanding from 2012 to 2015 is cutting government funding by 10 per cent over the three-year period.
MacInnis said CBU’s operating grant of $18.7 million was cut by four per cent in the current fiscal year, and will see a further reduction of three per cent this year, and another three per cent for 2014-15.
Although the Students Nova Scotia report is calling for a “significant proportion” of the weighted enrolment grant, including all funding for international students, to be reallocated on a conditional basis in other areas to be determined through discussions between the province and students, MacInnis said the university cannot ignore the increasing strain placed on the system due to the government cutbacks, and must spend its money strategically.
“That’s the business model we operate within, in this point in time. With essentially 50 per cent of your revenue dropping by 10 per cent, and your costs are going up by cost of living plus, you have to try to get more money from the other side of the equation, i.e. tuition revenues, and that can only come through raising tuition fees ... or growing enrolment.
“The other alternative, of course, is to reduce operating costs and we’ve done a lot of that over the years as well.”
The report was the result of three months of research and consultation across the province.
It has been adopted as official policy for Students Nova Scotia and by its students’ union associations at Acadia University, the Atlantic School of Theology, Dalhousie University, Saint Francis Xavier University, Saint Mary’s University and Cape Breton University.
cshannon@cbpost.com
