Budget freeze leaves schools in the cold

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This article was published 01/05/2017 (3112 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s post-secondary students get their first look this evening at the impact of the Pallister government’s freezing of university and college operating grants.

The University of Winnipeg board of regents meets to set the budget for the 2017-18 academic year with no increase in government grants and tuition still capped at the rate of inflation.

The April 11 budget froze operating grants, which had been increasing under the former NDP government in recent years by 2.5 per cent for universities and two per cent for colleges.

It was only this past Thursday in question period that the NDP first raised the alarm about frozen grants. The opposition and students have anguished over the loss of the tuition rebate for graduates and more than five per cent plus inflation tuition increases that start in 2018-2019.

The rebate is a Finance Department tax credit for graduates who stay in Manitoba. They can get a rebate of up to $2,500 a year, up to a total of the lower amount of either $25,000 or 60 per cent of the amount of tuition they paid.

That was costing the Manitoba treasury more than $50 million a year and Education Minister Ian Wishart argued there is no evidence it was successful in keeping graduates in Manitoba.

He’s opted to pump money into scholarships, bursaries and up-front financial assistance.

The U of W had asked for a grant increase of 2.5 per cent plus $1.5 million to make up ground on the historical disparity in funding compared to the University of Manitoba and Brandon University. Instead, it gets the same money as a year ago.

The U of W wouldn’t release its draft budget before this evening, but on April 11, president Annette Trimbee said in a prepared statement: “The funding for the University of Winnipeg in today’s budget is far less than what we require in order to maintain our operations. Today’s provincial budget means that we will be examining further reductions. We are receiving far less, so we will be looking at doing less.”

University of Manitoba president David Barnard had told his board of governors prior to the April 11 provincial budget to expect a one per cent increase in operating grants, which would be about $3.6 million in revenue for the U of M. The 2.5 per cent increase last year was worth $9 million to the U of M.

“Most of us expected one per cent,” Brandon University president Gervan Fearon said Friday.

“We have operating expenses that tend to grow at three per cent. We’ll be looking deeply within the services we provide. We’ll be holding some positions vacant.”

Fearon said enrolment grew six per cent this past September, well beyond other schools in the province, and that could provide some breathing room if enrolment increases similarly in the fall.

The BU president said the grants freeze combined with the one-year delay in the higher cap on tuition increases “triggers a gap” between costs and revenue for universities and colleges.

“We appreciate that this is an adjustment year” in which Wishart figures out how he’ll fund post-secondary in the long-term, Fearon said.

In question period Thursday, NDP education critic Wab Kinew — a former senior U of W administrator — accused the Tories of handcuffing universities and making it difficult to attract faculty to the province.

Said Kinew: “So what is the premier’s preferred option? Does he want these schools to cancel programs, to lay people off, or is it, as we suspected all along, that he wants to put the burden on students with skyrocketing tuition and asking them to pay more taxes if they stay in Manitoba?”

Pallister fired back that Kinew “is advocating for his friends in the academic community… Higher pay for professors is what he’s standing for, which means, of course, higher taxes, which means, of course, he’s also combining and putting on display a lack of understanding of how universities can be funding the ability to pay higher pay for his professorial colleagues.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca