NEWS FILE PHOTO Medicine Hat College is seen in this undated photo.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
The president of Medicine Hat College says changes announced to the province’s post-secondary funding formula appear to match the school’s goals, but concedes there’s much uncertainty about how the transformation will look in practice.
At a Monday morning press conference, Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides unveiled the province’s move toward a “completely transformative” performance-based funding model, which will compose 15 per cent of post-secondary funding for the 2020-21 school year and “gradually” increase to 40 per cent by 2022-23.
“The synergy is absolutely incredible – new funding models, new government, new strategic plan. I don’t think we can be in an any better position for that,” said MHC president and CEO Kevin Shufflebotham.
The minister has made no secret of the government’s intention to re-formulate how post-secondaries are funded, so the changes should come as no surprise, he added.
Nicolaides said the purpose of the changes are to incentivize “institutions to produce job-ready graduates” and to “ensure taxpayer dollars are being used in the most responsible way possible.”
This was one recommendation of the MacKinnon Report on the province’s finances released in September, in addition to removing a cap on tuition imposed by the previous government and cutting the Alberta Campus Grant, all of which have now been implemented.
The specific indicators used to determine funding are still up in the air, but the minister provided some potential examples:
– graduate employment rate;
– median graduate income;
– graduate skills and competencies;
– work-integrated learning opportunities;
– administrative expense ratio;
– sponsored research revenue;
– enrolment (including potential targets for domestic students, international students and under-represented learners).
Nicolaides said there will be no more than 20 measures, which will be “gradually introduced” in consultation with the province’s 26 post-secondary institutions.
Those that don’t meet these measurements in full will receive funding in direct proportion to what percentage of the criteria they’ve met.
“The downside to any new funding model is the uncertainty we see with it,” Shufflebotham noted. “Right now, when I walk through the hallways people are asking me, ‘What’s going to happen? Are we going to lose money? What’s going to happen with my programs? Are we going to be impacting students?’
“All I can tell people is that any decision we make, we’re going to have the students at our core and we’re going to be honouring the things we’ve done in the past in order to move into the future.”
At the news conference, Nicolaides said institutions will be able to pick a criterion of their own to include in their individualized measurements and will be free to weigh the indicators as they see fit for their own education goals.
Additionally, the ministry will enter into three-year “investment management agreements” with schools, which Shufflebotham says will provide a degree of predictability for MHC and dovetails with its three-year strategic plan.
“While indeed a portion of funding will be at risk, the majority of funding will not be,” Nicolaides said.
Colleges vs. universities
Carolyn Sale, a University of Alberta English and film studies professor who runs the blog Arts Squared, says the new funding model is a product of the UCP’s “savage cuts” to post-secondary education.
“What they’ve done is they’ve taken a ceramic, smashed it on the ground and now they’re daring to claim that only they have the tape and glue to fix the vase,” said Sale, who is a past president of the Association of Academic Staff at the University of Alberta.
“This is about taking a system that their cuts are already going to so drastically undermine, and then use the chaos that they have created to start re-directing funding to the technical institutes (and) more job-oriented programs.”
Nicolaides rejected the notion that tying funding to performance indicators will serve as a blow to the arts and humanities.
“The demand for our graduates to have critical thinking skills, and be very adaptive and flexible, is growing in importance,” he said. “Those are important skill sets that one learns primarily through liberal arts programming.”
But Sale says a university education is about more than simply acquiring a job.
“Nowhere does (Nicolaides) say anything about the general nature of a university education, because it doesn’t matter to him,” she said.
With regards to colleges like MHC, Shufflebotham says it’s their responsibility to adjust its programming according to the job market.
“From my desk, I don’t think it matters what funding model we’re in. I think we need to be good stewards of funds the government gives and that means being responsive to our community,” said Shufflebotham.
MHC Students’ Association president Dalton Eahry says he’s “satisfied to see the government prioritize accountability” by tying funding to employment outcomes.
However, the MHSA “remains committed to improving the affordability of education,” he said in a statement.
MHC administrators are proposing a seven per cent tuition hike at tonight’s board of governors meeting to fill the gap left by government grant cuts.
