Fate of tuition increase cap unclear as universities consider new funding agreements

Michael Gorman · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 09, 2025 1:39 PM EDT | Last Updated: 21 minutes ago

As universities crossed Nova Scotia see caller bilateral backing agreements from the province, a authorities authoritative volition not accidental if the erstwhile tuition summation headdress of 2 per cent volition stay successful place.

"I'll speech to you astir it successful a mates of weeks," Tracey Barbrick, deputy minister of precocious education, told reporters connected Wednesday.

Barbrick said each 10 universities received their respective bilateral agreements past week and they person until the extremity of adjacent week to motion them. She acknowledged the assortment of challenges facing universities, including declining enrolment among planetary students, attraction costs and the implications of ostentation connected each operations.

"They surely person their enactment chopped retired for them arsenic they look astatine their budgets internally, their different sources of revenue, their endowments and however they usage those endowments to marque definite that they're viable successful the agelong term."

Concerns astir outdated backing model

During the past schoolhouse twelvemonth the authorities capped tuition increases astatine 2 per cent for undergraduates but required increases to the rates for planetary students.

Appearing earlier the legislature's lasting committee connected nationalist accounts, Barbrick noted that the schools didn't travel adjacent to filling the province's full allocation of 20,000 slots for planetary students past year. It's excessively soon to cognize however galore of the 18,000 spots were filled this year, she said.

NDP acquisition professional Paul Wozney said it sounds similar the nationalist should beryllium prepared for a larger tuition summation successful the adjacent schoolhouse year.

"The lack of clarity connected that question, I think, gives everybody crushed for alarm," helium told reporters.

Wozney said the authorities needs to outline if it's prepared to supply universities with capable backing to assistance forestall large tuition increases and support semipermanent fiscal viability. He said the existent backing look is 25 years old.

"The auditor wide characterized the operating grants that spell to universities arsenic [being] determined connected an arbitrary basis. There's nary just rhyme-or-reason mode to fig retired however universities bash and don't get wealth from this authorities and it's clip for determination to beryllium clarity astir that."

New monitoring approach

Interim Liberal Leader Derek Mombourquette said he's acrophobic astir the outgo of tuition for students crossed the state and he's waiting to spot if the authorities steps up with much backing for universities to support rates from getting excessively high.

"Our universities play specified an important portion successful our state and we privation them each to beryllium viable," helium told reporters.

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The Progressive Conservative authorities passed authorities during the caller wintertime league astatine Province House that gives it much oversight connected the cognition of universities and the quality to intervene if determination are concerns astir the fiscal viability of an institution.

MLAs astatine Wednesday's committee gathering heard that the authorities volition present show six fiscal indicators for universities: nett income nonaccomplishment ratio; nett operating revenues ratio; the superior reserve; involvement load ratio; viability ratio, which outlines the proportionality of semipermanent indebtedness that could beryllium settled utilizing unrestricted assemblage assets; and the in-year surplus and/or deficit.

"This truly demonstrates the university's bottommost line," Cheryl To, enforcement manager of programs and accountability for the Advanced Education Department, told MLAs.

Barbrick told reporters that universities volition study the indicator information to the section connected a quarterly ground and it volition beryllium utilized to make a baseline that tin beryllium monitored. She said officials person nary contiguous concerns astir immoderate of the universities.