Over the next month the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) will be asking students across Nova Scotia to support a fee increase to better fund our advocacy efforts. This short video is meant to help you understand where your money currently goes and what voting in favor of the fee increase will mean. Students at Dal and SMU will be asked to vote in a referendum on this issue over the next two weeks. Students at Acadia, St. F.X. and Cape Breton University have already approved the increase through their councils.
(Halifax) – Students are demanding the Minister of Advanced Education, Marilyn More, reveal her plan for reaching her repeatedly stated commitment of keeping tuition at or below the national average. During a press conference held last week, the Minister admitted the government could not guarantee her promise of a cap on tuition increases beyond next year.
In March of last year, More sent a letter to the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) promising a three per cent cap on tuition increases “for 2011-12 and subsequent years.”
“Throughout six months of negotiations, we were told by senior government officials that tuition increases would be capped at three per cent a year,” said ANSSA Executive Director, Mark Coffin. “The agreement announced last week breaks this commitment and was loaded with language that creates many exceptions and opportunities for tuition to increase beyond the cap and very few rules.”
The likely outcomes of the agreement do not reflect the government’s stated commitment to keep tuition at or below the national average. Several components of the government’s plan lead ANSSA to believe the commitment will not be achieved:
The Nova Scotia Government does not appear to be basing it’s projections of the national average for tuition on what’s happening with tuition policy in other parts of Canada. The Government of Ontario, Canada’s largest province, is promising tuition reductions of thirty per cent to over 300,000 university and college students. This will make the national average significantly lower than otherwise projected
The Minister’s inability to guarantee a cap on tuition increases beyond next year equates to an inability to maintain the commitment to keeping tuition at the national average
Graduate tuition fees remain more expensive in Nova Scotia universities than any other province in Canada. ANSSA is asking for more specificity on the government’s commitment to maintain tuition at or below the national average and to which programs and students it will apply.
Lack of regulation on fees for students in dentistry, law and medicine programs will mean that tuition and other fees for those programs may grow well above the national average.
The “tuition policy review” mandated by the agreement lays the groundwork for tuition increases in programs that are currently below the market average for their program type, as well as further tuition increases for out of province students.
“We are asking the Minister to show us her plan to keep tuition at or below the national average,” said Kyle Power, ANSSA Chair. “Nothing we have seen suggests that she is serious about keeping this commitment to Nova Scotians who are depending on her honesty and leadership.”
The Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) is a not-for-profit, non-partisan advocacy group representing the interests of over 80% of Nova Scotian university students. We are over 35,000 students at Cape Breton, Dalhousie, Saint Mary’s, Acadia and St. Francis Xavier Universities and the Atlantic School of Theology. We are the largest student organization in Atlantic Canada.
The Province of Nova Scotia and it’s publicly funded universities have reached their third Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) since 2004. In a perfect world, the MOU is an agreement that acts like the rulebook for universities to follow in order to receive their operating grant from the government. Like the previous agreements, it represents a three year commitment to working together, but unlike the other agreements, this one will not lead to a stronger university system. Having sat in on the negotiation process, I can tell you that it’s bad for Nova Scotia, it’s bad for our universities, and it’s bad for our students. To explain why, we need to look closely at the previous two agreements.
How we got to MOU III
The main purpose of the previous two Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) was to give universities sustainable and predictable levels of funding for three years at a time. This is common practise across Canada. In fact Nova Scotia had become considered a leader in these Multi-Year Funding Agreements. So much so, that ours had been the model for the development of a multi-year funding agreement in New Brunswick, one of the few provinces that didn’t have a long term funding plan for its universities.
When MOU I began, Nova Scotia was chronically underfunding its universities. The first two MOUs guaranteed steady increases in government funding for six years. Still, by the end of MOU II, Nova Scotia’s government was funding our universities at a per-student rate lower than most, if not all other provincial governments in Canada (the last year we have national data for was 2008, and at that time we were dead last). This year (2011-12) the universities have been in limbo, without a formal funding agreement, but received a reduction in their operating grants from government of about 14 million dollars.
Now comes MOU III, which makes no mention of funding levels at all, other than noting that they’re too high and universities will be given at least four months notice of future year’s funding levels before they take effect.
It’s a good time to remind ourselves that universities really only have two revenue sources to fund their general operations: government support and tuition fee revenue. They also get a fair chunk of research dollars and donor contributions, but those types of dollars are solicited with a specific purpose. Research money is project based, and universities typically don’t solicit their alumni asking for support to pay the heating bill, hire a new professor to teach first year English or to pay the saintly custodial staff that keep our schools so squeaky clean.
Tuition Regulation
Instinctively, as the purse strings of taxpayer funding are tightened, the universities have put pressure on the government to loosen regulation on tuition fees. You might recall that about this time last year, the Minister of Advanced Education announced that she would be enforcing a three per cent cap on tuition increases for all students, except for those in Law, Medicine and Dentistry who saw their tuition fees balloon from 6 – 14 %.
We first saw the minister weaken her stance on capped tuition increases when Dalhousie asked to increase international student differential fees by an additional seven per cent, on top of the planned three per cent increase. We reminded her that allowing this would be breaking her commitment to students, and she compromised by only allowing a 3.5 per cent increase.
In MOU III, announced today, we’re seeing some definite bad news for students and plenty more mixed messaging from government on tuition regulation. In Section 11, the government’s oft-stated commitment to keep tuition for “Nova Scotia students” at or below the national average is weakly repeated. In the same section we read that annual increases in tuition rates will be limited to three per cent “pending the outcome of the Tuition Policy Review.” Other language in the same section suggests that out of province students can expect to see the cap on their tuition lifted or loosened by 2013. In programs where students have tuition fees lower than those of programs at “comparable” institutions, you can expect the administration to be working hard as bricks to raise those fees to match “comparable” programs.
The universities have said that they want more “flexibility” on tuition fees. That’s not really true. They want flexibility on tuition fees as much as students do. They want flexibility in the upward direction, while we want flexibility in the downward direction.
The province has also cleared the way for universities to freely increase tuition fees as much as they please for students of Law, Medicine and Dentistry programs, where tuition and fees amount to tens of thousands of dollars per student annually. Students of upper income families are already overrepresented in the professional faculties. For example, a 2002 survey of Canadian Medical Schools demonstrated that almost half (43.5 per cent) of medical students came from neighbourhoods with median family incomes in the top quintile of Canadian earners. Deregulation of tuition fees in the professional programs will only further this trend.
International student fees have also been completely deregulated. When it comes to international student fees, some university presidents will say that tuition fees will only be increased “as much as the market will bear”. Meanwhile, other presidents will tell you that low international tuition fees prevent us from being competitive in the global market. You should read that last line again, there aren’t any typos in it.
For at least the next three years, international students should consider their wallets the only release valve that the universities will draw significant revenue increases from, for two reasons. First, compared to professional student tuition fees, international student fees are much easier divert to any area of the university that needs money. Second, not every school has professional students, but they’ve all got international students.
Accessibility
Language in each of the three MOUs would lead you to believe that accessibility has been a major priority of this government and the previous two governments that signed MOUs with the universities. The only MOU that really did anything about access was MOU II, which froze tuition fees and was administered alongside a tuition reduction program.
To be clear, this MOU is just plain bad for accessibility. Considered as a whole, this MOU and other policies introduced by this government only make university education less accessible. Of course observers are bound to say something like “Yes, but it could have been a lot worse.” That’s true. But compared to previous MOUs, this one is a lot worse. Things can always get worse.
Know this: while tuition prices will continue going up for the foreseeable future, the purchasing power of a student loan has steadily declined each year since 2006. Last year, over 2,200 students on student loans were an average of $3,054 short of what they needed to pay for tuition, books, rent and groceries. See Figure 1.
ANSSA has been asking the government to increase the cap on student assistance grants to ensure that the neediest students are able to afford to attend university.
The Innovation Fund
The core purpose of MOU III is “to achieve a System wide cost structure that is sustainable relative to the fiscal capacities of the Province”. To assist universities in achieving cost reductions, the province has offered an innovation fund of $25 million dollars to the universities, available over the next three years. The purpose of the fund is to assist universities in reducing their operating costs by 25 million dollars while maintaining quality before the fund disappears entirely at the end of 2014. The magnitude of the fund compared to operating grant cuts are demonstrated in Figure 2. Even before the rising costs of goods are considered (which won’t be fully covered by the allowed tuition increases), there is a significant shortfall. And in 2014, the innovation funding disappears, leaving what is surely, by that point, a greater than $25 Million shortfall between expenses and revenues.
This part of the plan is just plain wonky, it reminds me of an older sibling stealing my supper, chewing it up, swallowing some and spitting the rest of it out on my plate before telling me “It’s still good.”
Figure 2 - Innovation Funding vs. Operating Cuts
While I’m all ears if someone has a plan to enhance collaboration and eliminate redundancy from the university system, I’m doubtful that a 25 million dollar savings can be found while the system absorbs almost all of three years worth of inflationary costs.
The Change Mandate
The last major piece of this agreement is that the parties agree to “work actively over the three years of the agreement on a change mandate” which will address issues like accountability, funding formulas, tuition policy, research, affordability and accessibility. To be honest, we thought these issues would be directly addressed by the work of the MOU negotiating committee we’d been apart of. However, due to some serious foot-dragging, the issues were never addressed.
Our first reaction to this was “Great! When can we start?” Then came the news that students wouldn’t be a part of the “Partnership” of university and government officials charged with executing the initiatives.
We told the government and the universities that we, as student representatives, want to be part of those discussions, we want to be proactive contributors on government policy for the universities we fund. We don’t want to be forced into the position of being reactive, negative student groups, but if we’re not invited to the table, we’ve really got no choice. We reminded those around the table that while the Province contributes over 320 million dollars annually into the university system, so do students.
Some language around the partnership board guarantees that students will be kept abreast of the work plans of the MOU, and that we will be invited to give input on specific issues and working groups. The sentiment was clear, however, that there were certain issues for which the government and universities were not interested in having us around the table.
This isn’t surprising, however, as soon into the process that lead to this MOU we were told that, while we would be invited to all meetings of the MOU negotiating committee, we would not be invited to the meetings of the working groups comprised of government staffers and university executives.
Wrap Up
So, to sum up:
Since 2004, Nova Scotia has made stepwise improvements by using MOUs I & II to increase funding to a chronically underfunded university system, and eventually freeze and reduce tuition. Over the next three years the government will cut funding by about $25 Million dollars annually, while the expenses facing the university system will grow by $30 Million each year. Tuition will “sort of” be capped at three per cent for most students, but no ones going to betting their MLA pension on it. International students will pay oodles more than they ever did for tuition, and some presidents think that will make us a more attractive place to study. Out of province students will likely soon face a similar, but not so extreme version of what international students will face. While most universities are busy shaking students by the ankles to get every last penny from their pockets, their presidents will be attending regular closed door meetings with government, most likely asking for looser regulations on shaking students by the ankles.
Press Release posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2012.
For immediate release: Thursday January 5th 2011
(Halifax) – The Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) is calling the agreement announced today between the Province of Nova Scotia the worst of its kind. Following two similar Memorandums of Understanding from previous governments that improved university funding and eventually froze and reduced tuition fees, the agreement announced today does the exact opposite.
“This move will make it nearly impossible for universities to provide the quality education students in Nova Scotia deserve,” said ANSSA Executive Director, Mark Coffin.
Last year’s funding cut resulted in reductions of quality of teaching at universities across the province. This has affected students at the classroom level.
“More cuts will mean more of the same – larger class sizes, fewer instructors, and when vacancies appear, they won’t be filled or will be filled by low-wage part time instructors,” said Coffin.
Nova Scotia continues to be the only province in the country reducing funding to universities. To dampen the blow of lost government revenue, the province has loosened regulation on tuition increases at universities.
“This agreement gives the universities plenty of room to raise tuition fees above the three per cent cap the minister promised students last year,” said ANSSA Chair, Kyle Power.
The agreement states that tuition increases will be capped at three per cent annually, “pending the outcome of [a] Tuition Policy Review, which will include a review of tuition levels at comparable institutions.”
Students of Law, Dentistry and Medicine and International students will be subject to unregulated tuition increases for the next three years. There will also be discussions surrounding whether to remove the cap on tuition fee increases for students from other provinces within Canada.
The agreement maintains that the province and the universities will ensure “an accessible system of universities.”
“Considered as a whole, this MOU and other policies introduced by this government only make university education in Nova Scotia less accessible forall who seek it,” said Power.
While tuition will be increasing for the foreseeable future, the purchasing power of a Nova Scotia student loan has steadily declined since 2005. Last year, over 2,200 students on student loans were an average of $3,054 short of what they needed to pay for tuition, books, rent and groceries.
ANSSA will be asking the government to increase the cap on student assistance to ensure that the neediest students are able to afford to attend university.
A blog posting on the ANSSA website contains a detailed analysis of the MOU in plain language and can be accessed here: http://anssa.ca/blog/
The Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) is a not-for-profit, non-partisan advocacy group representing the interests of over 80% of Nova Scotian university students. We are over 35,000 students at Cape Breton, Dalhousie, Saint Mary’s, Acadia and St. Francis Xavier Universities and the Atlantic School of Theology. We are the largest student organization in Atlantic Canada.
(Halifax) – The Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA), representing over 35,000 university students across the province, welcomes amendments to the Municipal Elections Act that will make voting in municipal elections more accessible for youth. Municipal Relations Minister, John MacDonnell, introduced legislation today that would remove discriminatory language towards “unmarried students” from the municipal elections act.
The previous legislation dictated that an unmarried student could only vote at their family home during a municipal election. Under the old legislation, a student does not have the option of voting in the community where they live and study. The new legislation allows a student the option to choose where they vote – either at home or at school.
“Allowing students to choose whether or not they vote at home or at school is a huge step forward for making young people full and valued citizens within their communities,” says ANSSA Executive Director, Mark Coffin. “The old legislation made it very difficult for a young person to participate in local government, this legislation makes it much easier.”
“If the government is serious about encouraging youth participation in democracy, the obvious next step is to amend section 10 of the act so that the ‘ordinary polling day’ for municipal elections across the province happens at some point after December 1st,” adds Coffin. “The unfortunate timing of elections in Nova Scotia still sends the message that young people should not be full participants in democracy.”
The current “ordinary polling day” is on the third Saturday in October. This means that anyone who is not ordinarily resident in a municipality prior to mid-July cannot vote in the municipal election.
Municipal elections in Nova Scotia always happen in mid-October, when most students aren’t eligible to vote. Additionally, every provincial election in the last 13 years has been held during the summer period, a time when a student’s residency is less certain than during the school year.
The Project: To produce a report assessing tuition and university funding models around the world and determine which of these models will work best for Nova Scotia. Free Tuition? High Tuition, High Aid? The Ivy League? Status quo? Our own unique brand?
The Team: A steering committee of students and researchers from faculties of Education, Economics, Public Policy and Political Science (or others) in universities across Nova Scotia.
The Invitation: We’re seeking interested students and faculty from across Nova Scotia to be part of our steering committee charged with the research and report writing.
The Timeline: We intend to have a complete report by Spring 2012.
The Value: Take a leading role in a province wide research project. Create a product that will influence public policy around higher education in Nova Scotia. Shape the university system you are already a part of.
Who We Are: The Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) is a not-for-profit, non-partisan advocacy group representing the interests of over 80% of Nova Scotian university students. We are over 35,000 students and the largest student organization in Atlantic Canada.
I’m Interested! What Next? Send us an email (ed@anssa.ca) with a brief description of who you are, why you are interested in being a part of our steering committee, and what experience would make you a good team member.
Press Release posted on Wednesday, September 14th, 2011.
For Immediate Release: September 14th 2011
(Halifax) – University students in Nova Scotia are returning to classes in the only Canadian province to reduce operating funding to universities this year. The Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) released a report today to remind the government that public spending in post-secondary education is an investment with predictable economic and social returns, and not simply a cost to be contained.
A copy of the report will be sent to each member of the legislative assembly.
Key Points from the report
Social Impact
Individuals with higher education are more likely to vote, volunteer, donate blood, give charitably, purchase earth friendly products, reduce their energy use and express openness to the opinions of other people.
Individuals with higher education are less likely to be arrested, incarcerated or commit criminal offenses
The cost of keeping a criminal in prison for two years ($204,000) is more than the government will ever spend subsidizing a citizen’s elementary, secondary and undergraduate education ($177,530).
Public Spending and Revenue Collection
University degree holders made up just 22 per cent of the Canadian population in 2008, yet contributed 41 per cent of all income tax and received only 14 per cent of government transfers.
Health
Individuals with higher education are more likely to report their health as very good or excellent and are more efficient in their use of health knowledge
These individuals are less likely to smoke, have narcotics addictions, to be obese and are more likely to exercise.
Economic Impact
Nova Scotia universities are responsible for an annual contribution of $968 million in gross domestic product, $227 million in tax revenue, $4.3 billion in economic output, $805.2 million in spending.
Universities directly and indirectly support 17,000 jobs
Research
Universities are the main research hubs in the region, attracting 61% of all research activity and more than $125 million in funding.
Excellence in research allows Nova Scotian to attract top researchers, academics and business to the province to further develop the provincial economy.
Pull Quotes
“The benefits we’ve illustrated will only be realized if we maintain and improve the quality and accessibility of our university system. In cutting funding to education at every level, our government is starving the goose that lays the golden egg.
- Mark Coffin, Executive Director, ANSSA
“The government of Nova Scotia has the opportunity to improve the accessibility of the university system in Nova Scotia as they create a long term funding agreement and tuition policy over the next four months. A more educated Nova Scotia will be a healthier, safer, more law-abiding and more civically engaged Nova Scotia.”
- Kyle Power, Chair, ANSSA
The report “ANSWERS: Higher education’s role as a catalyst for social and economic progress in Nova Scotia” is available here.
Improvements to Student Aid a Positive Step, Program Still Requires Tweaking
(Halifax) – Students intending to fund their education with government student loans will graduate with less debt in the coming years. Student representatives from the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) are pleased with the spirit of this and other improvements to student assistance announced in Tuesday’s budget address.
The debt cap of $28,560 will be phased in incrementally over the next four years. It will apply only to new loans taken out and will take effect upon the successful completion of a student’s program of study.
A study from the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission released earlier this year revealed that 73 per cent of graduates in the Maritimes left their first degree with an average of $37,013 in debt. A third of these individuals borrowed $45,000 or more to study.
“A debt cap at this level will do a great deal to help students who would otherwise be graduating with a huge amount of debt,” says Mark Coffin, Executive Director of the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations. “The slow phase in of the cap, and the completion criteria required to apply the cap are concerning, but nonetheless it is positive the government is moving in this direction.”
Other improvements in the student assistance program include the following:
a modest increase of weekly maximum assistance rates by $10/week
A doubling of the in-study earnings exemption on student loans from $50 to $100 per week
An increase in the textbook allowance, of $500 annually
Currently there are 2,275 students in Nova Scotia whose annual recognized need outweighs the maximum amount of available assistance by an average of $2,043. An additional ten dollars per week will do little to help these students as the cost of tuition and other goods continues to rise. Students across Nova Scotia had a collective unmet need of 4.65 million dollars in 2009.
“The announcements made about student assistance on Tuesday will, without a doubt, help students,” adds Coffin. “However, there is much more work needed improve student assistance.”
“We are hopeful the government will continue to cooperate with students to work towards our hope of having the best student assistance program in the country.”
In addition to student assistance reforms, ANSSA is hopeful that the government will take other measures to improve access to post-secondary education.
Early outreach programs like Pathways to Education and effective communication strategies about the nature of student assistance available are critical pieces of the puzzle as well. These tools are necessary to encourage first-generation post-secondary students and debt averse individuals to enroll.
Other items in the budget address included a previously announced four per cent cut in funding for the universities and permitting tuition to rise by up to three per cent for the foreseeable future.
ANSSA looks forward to participating in meetings to help shape the next funding agreement for universities that will span 2012 – 2015. Student representatives will be working to ensure the assistance measures announced Tuesday will not simply be used to cushion the blow of even greater tuition increases in future years.
Students grade university announcement as incomplete, hopeful that a late submission will improve grades on accessibility
(Halifax) – Elected student representatives have mixed feelings about Tuesday’s announcement on tuition and university funding from the Minister of Advanced Education. Students are concerned about the decision to allow tuitions to increase, but hopeful that promised student assistance reforms will more than offset this increase for the province’s neediest students.
The government plan includes the removal of the tuition freeze introduced by the previous government and the introduction of a cap that will allow increases in tuition by up to three percent. There will be a 4 per cent cut to the universities’ operating grant, which equates to almost $ 14 Million in reduced funding, while the costs of operating a university continue to rise.
“Students will be expected to pay more into a system that continues to be underfunded by government,” says Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations Chairman, Rob LeForte. “Nova Scotia will continue to have the lowest per-student funding in Canada.”
The government has also renewed the provincial bursary program that, if lost, would have resulted in an additional 22 per cent jump in tuition fees for students originally from Nova Scotia.
“This is a significant investment from government that we hope to see continued, not just next year, but also in future years,” added LeForte.
The government reaffirmed their commitment to reform student assistance, after acknowledging this fall that the program is one of the weakest in the country. No firm details have been provided in this announcement, but student representatives have been assured a follow-up meeting will happen by the end of the month.
“The danger is in the unknown right now,” worries ANSSA Executive Director, Mark Coffin. “We can’t say that students will be better served under this plan, but our hope is that the improvements will be generous enough that students will be more than protected from tuition increases by student aid improvements.”
“Right now Nova Scotia has one of the worst student assistance programs in North America and the most debt-ridden graduates in the country,” adds Coffin.
“Investments in universities and in programs that reduce student debt will make us more economically competitive as a province and make young people more likely to live, work and invest in our local economies. We can’t think of these investments as a cost to be contained as in other areas of government spending.”
Students are encouraged by the Minister’s commitment to invite students to discussions to develop the next three year funding arrangement for universities that will take effect in 2012.
