On December 18, the Herald published an editorial by Charles Cirtwill, the President of AIMS. In his editorial, he called for a “radical re-think” of how we fund post-secondary education in Nova Scotia.
His argument ended in suggesting that the Government of Nova Scotia should stop funding post-secondary institutions and give all of the money normally allotted for institutions to students through “an enriched student loan program, expanded bursaries and grants, debt relief, and, if you must, student incentives in fields where we have a demonstrable skills shortage.”
He arrives at this overly simplistic solution to the post-secondary education problems facing Nova Scotia’s university students after giving nothing more than a shallow refutation of what he called, “the three basic truths that drive out collective decision-making about post-secondary funding.”
The three basic truths Mr. Cirtwill identified are that governments set tuition fees, that universities are not businesses, and that supporting institutions is the same as supporting students.
He argues that the government pays universities to lower their fees; that universities are business because they have assets, human resources, and exchange a service for a fee; and that we give money to post-secondary institutions only because we want to support students.
After attempting to refute the “three basic truths” his argument flows like this: the government does not set tuition fees, universities are business, and when we invest in post-secondary education we do so ONLY to benefits students and ourselves, therefore, we must stop giving money to post-secondary institutions and give all post-secondary education funds directly to students.
Tuition fees are determined by the difference between government funding and the operational costs. This means that while the actual decision to set an institutions tuition fees is made by the respective boards’ of Nova Scotia’s post-secondary institutions the government sets the reality in which a decision must be made. Even though, as Mr. Cirtwill points out, cost cutting measures can reduce tuition fees to a degree, the manner in which he characterized tuition fees over simplified the complex reality in which that decision takes place.
According to Mr. Cirtwill, universities are businesses and since we do not cover the operating costs of all business to the extent we cover those of post-secondary institutions we should stop. We should stop because we only give post-secondary institutions public money because we want to support students. We want to support students for both “altruistic” and “selfish” reasons. While it is impossible to be both altruistic and selfish at the same time, I’ll ignore this contradiction.
Mr. Cirtwill is wrong. We give money to post-secondary institutions for many reasons, not one. To name a few, we give money to post-secondary institutions because they are essential for a vibrant and lively economy and because they attract immigrants that increase an areas creative capital, population (when it is desperately needed), and social diversity. Mr. Cirtwill would have us believe that the correlation between the location of universities and the economic success of areas is an accident.
If we were to follow Mr. Cirtwill’s advice, our post-secondary institutions would receive no money, be forced to compete with one another, drastically cutting costs (and, therefore, quality) or face a mass exodus of Nova Scotian students to other provinces. Such an exodus would force massive cuts in some institutions and the shutdown of other institutions. Since there is such correlation between economic success, creative capital, and the presence of universities, losing university would be a direct blow to the economy.
To completely cut funding to post-secondary institutions is typical of AIMS’s view of government spending on social services. They repeated argue that greater government spending necessarily means inefficiency while ignoring that an actual measure of inefficiency is the proportion of effort to achieve a desired end.
The “radical re-think” championed by AIMS would throw our post-secondary institutions into a downward spiral of cannibalistic competition and cost cutting actions that will serve no one, certainly not our students.
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