For immediate release: April 3rd 2012

(Halifax) – Student representatives are reluctantly hopeful that a $5.5 M increase in funding to student assistance announced in the provincial budget will dampen the blow of tuition increases on students with the greatest need in the coming year. The budget lacks specific details on where new funding will go, but even if funding is directed to students who need it, all students will continue to pay more for a lower quality of education as the province moves forward with it’s plan to cut nearly $25 million from the university system.

“We are pleased that the government has decided to dedicate new money to helping students attend university, as too many of our classmates at schools across the province are thousands of dollars short of making ends meet,” said Kyle Power, a student at Acadia University and Chair of ANSSA. “What continues to worry us is the chronic underfunding of schools at every level in the province.”

Earlier this year the provincial government announced an additional 10 million dollar funding cut to universities for next year, on top of last year’s cut of over 14 million dollars. Spending on education by government is subject to the province’s agenda of fiscal restraint, despite it’s proven effectiveness as an investment that springs returns.

“When you make it easy to get a high quality education, you’ll see returns not just for students but for all Nova Scotians,” said ANSSA Executive Director, Mark Coffin.

Previous research by ANSSA has shown that well educated people spend less time in hospitals, prison and collecting unemployment payments. The highly educated spend more time taking care of their own health, contributing to local communities through monetary donations and volunteer work and are more likely to be employed, contributing the lion’s share of taxes to government.

“By ignoring all of the evidence that shows that education is an investment, the government is starving the goose that lays the golden egg,” added Coffin.

ANSSA looks forward to a more detailed announcement in the near future that will describe where the new funding in student assistance will be directed.

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.

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For Immediate Release: Monday January 9th 2011

(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 1^st,” 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.

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For more information please contact:

Alex MacKeigan

Communications Officer

902.422.4068 * communications@anssa.ca

Originally published in the Dalhousie Gazette on January 28, 2011

When you are on the executive of a university student union, invitations to participate in decision-making with the university come to you. During my time as vice-president (education) for the Dalhousie Student Union, the number of invitations we received was overwhelming, and many of them for quite trite decisions.

I recall getting one invitation to join the hiring committee for a position as benign-sounding as head groundskeeper. Universities, in my experience, are hyper-aware of the importance of inviting students and other stakeholders to the decision making table, and do so to a nauseating degree.

Our provincial government, on the other hand, couldn’t be more unlike our universities. Advocates for education in Nova Scotia know this all too well. The government has asked the school boards to detail what a 22 per cent funding cut would look like, and the school boards responded. Judging from the media discourse, the discussion has stopped there.

School boards have understandably decided to share the results of their cost cutting scenarios with both the government and the public. In brief, they’ve said that the result would mean 70 schools closing and 4000 jobs disappearing across the province.

Nova Scotia Premier Darrel Dexter has snapped back, saying “it’s terribly irresponsible to be creating the kind of fear that they are creating by bringing forward these scenarios.”

In other words, this was either meant to be an internal conversation that the government wasn’t ready to bring to the public, or it was meant to be a public relations tactic that has evidently backfired, and they likely wish everyone would stop talking about it. Regardless of their intent, the government’s inability to bring their concerns to the public in an honest manner is just bad politics.

University administrations have just completed a similar exercise—albeit much less public—where they’ve been asked to demonstrate what the effect of an undisclosed drop in funding to the post-secondary system would be. Not surprisingly, students were not invited to partake in this discussion.

When asked about school boards, university funding, or tuition in the legislature, the government’s response is unsatisfactory. They’ve given dodgy responses to serious questions, while they are evidently giving serious consideration to dodgy proposals like increasing tuition.

To a certain degree, this is how politics works, and it’s how politics have always worked. A government knows they have to make a tough decision, so they leak some information publicly that suggests the actual decision might be worse than whatever they have planned. Then, rather than announce the slightly less alarming decisions when they’re actually made, they wait until the last minute and announce them all at once (in our case, probably on budget day), because it’s better to have one bad news day than many.

Unfortunately, in the case of education funding, this drawn-out process is hurting the very citizens the government is elected to serve. Students are unable to plan for the costs that will be expected of them next year, not knowing how much tuition will be. School boards and university administrations are forced to spend more time and energy securing adequate funding for next year’s operations and devote less attention to improving the quality of education we’re all paying for.  Teachers, faculty and other school employees are concerned about job security, and smart ones are looking for employment elsewhere.

Perhaps the situation won’t be as dire as the letters to the editor, town hall meetings and alarmist presentations would have us believe. But, without a genuine discussion on education funding, we’ll never know.

Mark Coffin is Executive Director of the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA), an organization representing the interests of over 35,000 university students in Nova Scotia. Mark is a student in the Faculty of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, and a Dal alumnus.

Originally published in the Dalhousie Gazette on December 3 2010

“Students need to be invited to the table during the negotiation of the next university funding agreement.” This is the message the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) has been sharing with every MLA, minister and public servant we’ve met with over the past two years. It was one of the guiding principles used to help create the current funding agreement under the leadership of then-Education Minister, and now Progressive Conservative Education Critic, Karen Casey. It is also the same message that Liberal Education Critic Kelly Regan expressed to the Minister of Education, Marilyn More, last Tuesday in the legislature.

So why are students being kept out of discussions about the negotiation of the next funding agreement? It would appear that the government is more interested in working with economist Tim O’Neill than working with students.

Between January and September, stakeholders across the higher education sector waited patiently for O’Neill to complete his government commissioned review of the universities. The result: a call for unregulated increases in tuition fees alongside equally unpopular proposals for merging schools.

Student groups have spoken out against the recommendations. All of the faculty unions in the province have given the report a failing grade. Even some university administrations, such as those at Cape Breton University and Mount Saint Vincent University, have expressed opposition to O’Neill’s plans for tuition.

Our government said they would listen to stakeholders with genuine interest. Instead, the Dexter government has gone behind our backs and rehired O’Neill to sell the findings from his report to the public, while advising the province on negotiating a new funding agreement with the universities.

According to a freedom of information request filed by ANSSA, O’Neill’s extended contract was signed at the end of July, almost two months prior to the public release of his report—long before stakeholders were given an opportunity to provide feedback.  He will continue to receive compensation for his work until mid-December (unless, of course, Premier Darryl Dexter decides to hire him again).

Why is government continuing to seek counsel from the author of a report that was near universally decried? According to Dexter, it’s because he likes what O’Neill has to say. “We value the work that he’s done,” he noted in the legislature last week. “We hope he will continue to provide the good advice.”

Dexter has done anything but distance himself from O’Neill’s recommendations on tuition by appointing him as advisor to the team that will set the next number of years worth of tuition policy for the province. O’Neill’s continued employment can only be viewed as the government’s silent adoption of his recommendation to increase tuition.

O’Neill appears to have taken the spot formerly filled by elected student leaders. For over a year, elected student leaders have been requesting detailed information on how students will be involved in the creation of the next university funding agreement. When asked about the issue in Question Period last Wednesday, Minister More gave no indication that students would be a part of the group negotiating the next agreement [Time warp edit: The minister has since committed to having both university presidents and students "at the table" for these discussions]. Meanwhile, university presidents have already received their invitation to the discussions.

If you are angry and frustrated with the government’s oppositional attitude towards students and its alliance with economists who argue for increased fees, speak out!

Send a pre-written letter to your MLA by visiting ANSSA’s campaign site at TappedOut.ca.Phone or visit your MLA. Call the Minister of Education. Most importantly, get in touch with your student union to learn how you can help out with on-the-ground campaigns. If you don’t speak up, they’ll think you don’t care.

Mark Coffin is Executive Director of the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA), an organization representing the interests of over 35,000 university students in Nova Scotia. Mark is a student in the Faculty of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, and a Dal alumnus.