Nova Scotia
has had no shortage of snake-oil get-rich-quick schemes. Consider the
allegedly humungous natural gas deposits off our shores, which were
supposed to turn us into Alberta East—the actual reserves are so puny
that production will dry up in a few years. Some consultants made some
dough, I guess. Otherwise, meh.
Or, for a lesson in cynicism, thumb through the provincial economic
development loan portfolios and study all the companies that promised
thousands of jobs in return for government assistance up front, only to
go belly-up a couple of years down the road.
Then there were those who insisted that if we just bankrupted
ourselves to host the Commonwealth Games, construction companies would
have enough business to hire us all as framers and drywall hangers, or
some such.
My favourite get-rich-quick scheme, however, was the notion that, in
exchange for free provincial land and $45 million in federal funding,
we’d get a spaceport in Cape Breton, and locals could soon zoom off to
Jupiter to spend our new wealth in Europan casinos.
Funny how news coverage of the demise of these pie-in-the-sky
schemes is a pale shadow compared to the hoopla that greeted them. It’s
almost as if, after the fact, we’re embarrassed about our naivity.
As well we should be—we should know better. Wealth doesn’t often
drop down from space or percolate up from the bottom of the ocean;
rather, it comes from hard work and careful management of resources
over time.
And from our fisheries to our forests to our farmland, Nova Scotians
have done a shitty job of managing resources. But our most neglected
resource is our young people: we’ve failed them at every turn. As a
result, some fall into drug addiction and crime, and many more find
they have to flee the province in pursuit of a living wage and a
purposeful life.
Successfully addressing those problems will take decades. But one
thing we can do now is to make it possible for students to gain a
post-secondary education without assuming enormous debt.
The economic return of an inexpensive college education is far more
tangible than the return from spaceports or phantom gas wells or
economic development ministers making insider deals. Debt-free
graduating students become the educated workforce valued by businesses.
They begin their own companies, generating new business. They bring an
artistic and social vitality that is essential for a healthy
economy.
Four years ago, the Progressive Conservative government promised
that Nova Scotia’s sky-high university tuition rates would match the
national average by the 2010-11 school year. In reality that meant
freezing tuition increases and hoping (!) that other provinces would
increase their tuition rates. But even that cynical strategy
hasn’t panned out, so for the past couple of years the province has
additionally given a “bursary” payment to universities on behalf of
in-province residents. That payment is $1,022 this year.
Busary payments will help those students who fit a tight set of
restrictions—the recipient must have been a non-student resident for
the proceeding 12 months—but they don’t match the reality of life as
it is for the many of thousands of young people who may have left the
province to find work to save up for a college education back home, or
for those who drop in and out of school as finances permit. And
bursaries miss out-of-province residents entirely; it’s a mistake to
lose out on the economic potential of those newcomers to the
province.
The new NDP government plans to up the bursary a tad (to $1,283 next
year) and is embarking on a tax rebate of up to $15,000 over six years
for those graduates who make their home in Nova Scotia. But college
education is by its very nature a guessing game—and those entering a
post-secondary institution would be foolish to map out their
educational expenses based on expected earnings to gain a future tax
rebate.
The NDP needs to quit the accounting games and get to the core of
the issue—the government should simply lower tuition rates to an
affordable level. The investment would be good for our young people,
and good for our economy.
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This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2009.
Had I not graduated this past May I would be sitting out the upcoming academic year on account of the dismal employment opportunities this past summer in Nova Scotia. Out of province students are aware of how much higher the cost of education is in NS, but despite contributing to the community here during their stay they get no favors from tuition-reducing strategies from government. The prestige of local institutions like NSCAD and King’s isn’t enough of a draw if students can’t trust they’ll be able to ride out 4 years in NS financially, all while school facilities and access dwindle.
http://cnw.ca/en/releases/archive/Septembe…
The government cannot simply pay more for tuition, what we need is a comprehensive solution that takes into account why our rates are so high, then when that problem is solved, work on making them lower.
The tuition is so high in Nova Scotia right now because federal funding is based on the population of graduating high school students in a province and not the admitted population to post secondary institutions. This puts an unfair burden on our province since our enrolled university students vastly outnumber our high school graduates. This greatly benefits Ontario where they have many more HS grads than Post secondary students.
We need to be lobbying the government to change the funding formula to one that takes into account this disparity, and put each University on equal footing when it comes to funding.
Once that is done, tuition in the province would be able to be lowered without much cost to the government and the schools themselves. We shouldn’t have to pick up the slack because we accept more come from away students than we have local students, and that’s what you’re asking us to do every time you want the government to lower tuition.
Throwing money at a problem makes it go away, but the cost in the long term usually far outweighs the cost of fixing it properly in the short term.
Currently, the tuition a student pays covers about 25% of the cost of his/her university education. The remaining 75% is covered largely by the tax payer (along with some endowments etc.).
I’m inclined to think the 25/75 ratio is approximately fair for local students. I’m not sure it is fair that so many out-of-province students have their education largely covered by Nova Scotian tax payers.
Furthermore, we are a small city. Depending on how you count it, we have a population of 300 000 with ~8 000 graduating students per year. Is it any wonder we can not hire all these grads? Not many cities in Canada could do it.
It’s time we stop putting ourselves down for having amongest the highest tuition rates in the country and look at the reasons why, as Vegi-Guy Sky very aptly put. It’s also time for N.S. University grads to stop being shocked that they can’t necessarily get a job in their field. We have a highly educated work force and a desirable place to live and simply can’t afford to hire so many students that come from other provinces in the first place.
Part of the problem is that we have too many universities for a province of this size. Cut out the unnecessary ones like CBU, amalgamate SMU and MSVU, and see what savings you can achieve.
As a student of MSVU I find that highly offensive. Sorry if you think Dal is the be all end all but I personally liked the small atmosphere of the Mount where you could learn in a classroom of 30 instead of an auditorium of 300.
While we’re addressing the high tuition why not address the student loan repayment terms.
Sorry you found it offensive — but sometimes that’s what truth does. It isn’t about Dal, it is about grim reality. We simply cannot afford to run universities that have small class sizes like you describe. This province has no money and places like MSVU are simply unsustainable.
Uh oh Bo, you’ve upset the Bedford Puritans.
We really do have too many schools in Nova Scotia
Acadia (Acadia Advantage — pay more!)
Atlantic School of Theology (Jesus)
UCCB (University of Crayons and Coloring Books)
Dal (The microsoft of Atlantic Canada)
King’s (Mini Hippy Dal)
Mount Saint Vincent (Bedford Puritans)
Agricultural College (MooooOOOO)
College of Art and Design (Picasso shit)
Xavier (look at my ring as I serve your dinner/beer)
Saint Mary’s (too easy)
Saint Anne (Pay-back for 1755)
Compare this to Alberta 5 , Manitoba 5, New Brunswick 4, Newfie 1, PEI 1 , Sask 3…
As Vegi-guy Sky pointed out, the problem is the federal funding formula. If the federal money went to the provinces based on enrollment then our tuition would be comparable to the rest of the country. It would be a shame to have to close a bunch of universities that attract out-of-province students (and their money) when the federal money that pays for those students goes to schools they are not attending in Ontario. Let’s start there, with changing the federal funding formula, and then see if we need to close some schools afterwards.