A call to action for university funding

GARRY SRAN/h3>

ILLUSTRATION TED BARKER<

It has been over a year since the last federal election was called. For students, it has been a year of federal inaction. However, the past year started with a number of exciting prospects. As we head into a new school term and a National Day of Action for Post-Secondary Education on Feb. 7, we should take a moment to consider the action — or rather inaction — of our federal government with respect to funding for colleges and universities, and making post-secondary education more accessible to all students.

During the last federal election, the Conservatives promised to create a dedicated cash transfer for post-secondary education. Their commitments fell short of increasing core funding or working with the provinces to improve access to higher education, but their promise of a dedicated envelope for post-secondary education was still welcomed by students. A dedicated envelope of funding would ensure increased accountability of the money coming from the federal government to the provinces by increasing our ability to see exactly how much money is coming from the feds, and to ensure that the funds are being spent only on universities and colleges.

Unfortunately, the spring federal budget didn’t follow through with Harper’s commitment of creating such a dedicated transfer, and neither did his government’s recent economic update. The budget also did not include any increase in core funding to help improve the quality of our laboratories, reduce class sizes, increase the number of faculty and provide fair wages to teaching assistants and sessional instructors.

The Harper government isn’t the first to ignore the needs of students and our education system. The story of under-funding for post-secondary education goes much farther back. Transfers to the provinces for postsecondary education were cut significantly between 1995 and 1998, bringing the core federal contributions to its lowest levels in more than 30 years. Provinces struggled with the increased burden, and passed those costs on to students and their families. Thus, while eliminating Canada’s budgetary deficit, the funding burden was shuffled off the national books onto the backs of students in the form of student debt.

It’s precisely this inaction that has restricted the provincial government’s ability to adequately fund our institutions. As a direct result of federal funding cuts, tuition fees at Canadian universities and colleges more than doubled in less than a decade. Manitoba students saw tuition fee increases of double digits throughout the 1990s, up until the provincial tuition fee freeze was implemented in 2000.

It appears that it is this history of underfunding that is now driving Manitoba universities and colleges to introduce and increase ancillary fees, and likely why all Manitoba students are paying more in ancillary fees this year and last, despite the provincial tuition fee freeze — which was introduced to begin to address and correct years of massive tuition fee hikes.

Proponents of tuition fee increases argue that it is precisely because our university needs more funding, as noticed by the state of our infrastructure, for example, that tuition fees should be increased. Some proponents purport to consider students when making this argument by suggesting that increases be capped at five per cent, or the rate of inflation. However, increasingly financing the operation of our institutions by forcing students to pay more only takes the pressure off of our governments to adequately fund post-secondary education. We have seen time and again, in jurisdictions in Canada and in other western countries, that tuition increases are accompanied by declining government support for post-secondary institutions. Simply put, the only way to ensure our university gets the money it needs is through increased government funding.

In August, Canada’s premiers gathered for their annual meeting in St. John’s to tackle the most pressing issues shared by the provinces. On the agenda were the fiscal imbalance, energy, and the fiscal imbalance. Bad news for students — the premiers hardly poked their heads out from under the topic of the fiscal imbalance, which meant that post-secondary education and training received no attention. For the Council of the Federation, this inaction was a step backwards, after coming together in August 2005 and calling on the federal government to reinvest at least $2.2 billion in post-secondary education. No such call was made after this meeting in August 2006.

Federal reinvestment in core funding to universities and colleges is long overdue. Students, faculty, staff, and administrators have been calling on the federal government to respond to the needs of Canadians by placing an increased priority within their budgets and actions on postsecondary education. It’s high time the federal and provincial governments cooperated on building accessible post-secondary institutions and improving the quality at universities and colleges by playing a larger role in financing advanced education. It is the only thing that will begin to reverse years of inaction and neglect by successive political leaders.

On Feb. 7, hundreds of thousands of students from St. John’s to Victoria will take part in the Canadian Federation of Students National Day of Action for Post-Secondary Education. Among other issues, students across the country will be demanding that the federal government follow through on its promise, and create a dedicated transfer payment for post-secondary education. With a federal election lurking in the coming months, this is our opportunity to be heard, and to make it clear to MPs that students will not allow them to continue to shirk their promises. It’s time to hold the federal government to account.

Garry Sran is president of the University of Manitoba Students’ Union (UMSU).