brunswickanopinion
Feb. 4, 2009 • Issue 19 • Volume 142 • 15
THE PRICE OF EDUCATION Post-secondary education is costly, and without change, it could get costlier. UNB has played host to significant public discourse over the past few months on how to tackle the rising costs. The Brunswickan has asked two student groups to present their views on the future of postsecondary education in the province. The New Brunswick Student Alliance is a provincial-level student lobby group, of which the UNB Student Union is a member. The Coalition for Accessible & Affordable Education is a new student group that is dissatisfied with the status quo. Both groups have been asked to outline their stance on current PSE funding models and student financial aid, and how they believe they can be realistically changed. Here are their responses.
The New Brunswick S T U D E N T
Duncan Gallant NBSA President
There is little debate about the current situation for post-secondary education (PSE) students in New Brunswick. The average debt load after a four year program is the highest in the country at $34,000, which is $10,000 higher than the national average. This severely reduces the options students have when graduating and also demonstrates how ineffective New Brunswick’s student financial aid programming is and that it must be improved. All students agree on this much. The NBSA believes that postsecondary education should be of high quality, affordable, and accessible to all. To ensure high quality, the government must increase funding to PSE institutions. To ensure accessibility, the government must assist students
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who are less likely to go to PSE by providing proper financial support and information on the cost, benefits, and options for PSE. To do this, the NBSA is lobbying for increased targeted grants to students from under-represented groups including rural and low-income families. We were successful in lobbying for improved counselling in high schools to better inform students of their options in PSE. To reduce student debt and improve affordability, the NBSA advocates for a $6,000 annual cap on student debt and an improved repayment system, similar to the new RAP (Repayment Assistance Program) that the federal government will implement this fall. This debt cap would ensure that no student from New Brunswick would have a student loan higher than $6000 in a year and additional assistance would be in the form of a grant. If a student was assessed as needing $11,000, the first $6,000 would be a loan and the remaining $5,000 would be a non-repayable grant. The impact of a debt cap would be that
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the maximum debt load after four years would be $24,000. The benefits of a debt cap program are even more pronounced if you compare it to a tuition freeze or reduction. A tuition freeze would have little impact on student debt; the average graduating debt load would still be $34,000. It is likely that the debt load would be higher considering that all other costs, like living expenses, would continue to increase. For a student who has moved away from home and is living in an apartment to attend a PSE institution, their living costs and text books will amount to much more than their tuition. The NBSA urges you to consider the total cost of an education for a student. Under a tuition freeze, a student’s ability to afford these other costs would remain the same, whereas a debt cap program considers the total cost of an education for a student. While a tuition reduction would improve the relative situation of all students, those with the highest debt loads would be better served by our
proposed debt cap. Consider that 44 per cent of students graduate with no form of loans; with every dollar given to a tuition reduction or freeze, 44 cents of that dollar goes to a student who may not need it. The NBSA argues that this money would be more effective with a debt cap where 100% of every dollar goes to a student with need. Students may ask: “What about other students with loans under $6,000 annually?”. These students would be helped by the RAP. This is an optional program that students who are having difficulty repaying their loans may access. Through this, loan payments will be adjusted depending on income with a maximum of 20 per cent of monthly income toward a loan payment. A criticism is that programs of this type force graduates earning low wages to stay in debt forever. However, under RAP, the government pays the interest for those in a low income bracket for five years. After five years, the government begins to pay part of the loan principle also. If any amount of the loan remains
after 15 years, it is forgiven entirely. Although the NBSA would like to see this end date sooner, this program is an improvement. To be clear, the NBSA is not against a tuition freeze or reduction. We feel a debt cap with an improved repayment system would be more effective. If a tuition freeze or reduction were implemented on top of increased grants, a debt cap, and an improved repayment system, we would be overjoyed and supportive. However, if given the choice between freezing or reducing tuition, versus implementing a debt cap, we would choose the program that would help those students with the greatest need. Once we have programs that help those students, then we can start advocating for reduced tuition. To reduce tuition without addressing the total cost of education for those most in need would be similar to a doctor helping healthy people before helping those in critical condition. We are advocating helping those with the greatest need first and then helping everyone.
coalition for accessible & affordable education Neil Cole CAAE
The Coalition for Accessible and Affordable Education (CAAE) draws together its partners on the basis of creating a post-secondary education (PSE) system in New Brunswick that is accessible and affordable to all qualified and willing individuals. We are a coalition dissatisfied with the status quo, and we are taking action to enact meaningful and substantive change in this province. The way the government of New Brunswick, as well as most of the rest of Canada’s jurisdictions, funds PSE is unsustainable and detrimental to the growth of this province. As a society, we can no longer afford to siphon off funding from our social programs, including higher education. The
government wishes to shift funding of education to the user to absolve itself of financial responsibility, but simultaneously our current government is trying to repatriate New Brunswickers that have left, as well as bring in more immigrants to grow its shrinking tax base and worker population. While cutting funding to PSE, the government wants to extend its fingers even deeper into the affairs of universities and colleges under the guise of accountability. The people should be holding the government accountable for its slash-and-burn approach to funding higher education, and they should be demanding the government be more responsible and make post-secondary education in this province a real priority. It is not enough to have commissions and action plans if our government isn’t going to commit itself to funding our institutions to have a system of higher education that is accessible and affordable, and of high quality. The CAAE is not fooled by the government’s rhetoric. The
government has done virtually nothing to create an accessible and affordable PSE system in New Brunswick, nor the federal government in the rest of Canada. The proof is in the pudding: New Brunswick has moved from second to third highest average tuition in the country, not because our government has put money into higher education, but because the Ontario provincial government is doing a worse job at managing its social responsibilities. A province with the second and now third highest average tuition rates in the country is pretty much tied for the highest average debt in the country. The logical disconnect should be obvious. The government isn’t giving up the goods to the universities and colleges to keep tuition fees down, and neither is the government giving up the goods to students in meaningful financial aid, such as grants and bursaries. These trends cannot continue. The CAAE proposes that the tuition freeze be kept over the coming year and that the government replaces the funding that it has cut from PSE. Furthermore,
we demand that tuition fees be reduced as government funding is replaced. Let’s be certain: a tuition freeze is a very short-term goal. Freezes do nothing to reduce student debt if funding does not going into grants and bursaries. Tuition freezes simply maintain debt levels at a consistent rate, rather than having them grow. To the CAAE, this is only a halfmeasure and it is not enough! The CAAE advocates that with replaced and then increased government funding that tuition fees can be reduced on a continuous basis, and we feel that the only acceptable goal is to have tuition fees eliminated entirely. Some may believe this is a very lofty and unrealistic goal, but it has been done in both Wales and Ireland in this decade. We propose that PSE in New Brunswick be funded much the same way as health care. We propose the creation and implementation of a Postsecondary Education Act that would govern the funding of higher education much the same way the Canada Health Act governs our public health care, because, like health care, higher education is a public good and a social
responsibility. With PSE funded the same way as our health care, it would not become a burden upon individual users, should they not have the means to pay for their education up-front. The obvious question remains: “What can we do as students?”. The CAAE organized its Slash Fees Forum to provide an alternative informative voice about the reality of funding postsecondary education in this province. Students and student groups should be calling upon their respective representatives to lobby for a wellfunded, accessible, and affordable education system. Students can take motions to their groups for them to adopt a position in favour of reduced tuition fees and increased grants and bursaries. The next step is for students to rally together and to combine their voices with each other and with faculty and our communities, so that it will become hard, if not impossible, for the government to ignore us. The CAAE plans to develop a policy position and take it to the government as an alternative to the status quo.