BU strike symptom of deeper funding issues

by Jim Clark

Many non-academics may be surprised that the Brandon University strike has become the longest university strike in Manitoba history. But for those of us who teach and conduct research in Manitoba’s mainstream universities, it is a symptom, like our mediocre Maclean’s magazine rankings, of deep problems caused by a lack of adequate funding and mistaken use of the limited funds that are available.

The funding shortfall of many millions of dollars every year arises from multiple causes. Manitoba post-secondary institutions experience shortfalls in federal and provincial funding relative to the rest of Canada. In 2009, for example, Manitoba institutions received only 3.2 per cent of Canada’s provincial funding and 2.8 per cent of federal funding, far below our 3.7 per cent of the population.

And laudable though the goal of accessibility might otherwise be, our exceptionally low tuition rates further undermine the capacity of universities to offer quality programs, especially when they are not compensated by generous government funding to make up the shortfall, and are even paired with below-average government funding, as noted above.

Perhaps this underfunding could be accommodated by thoughtful expenditures, but misguided use of these limited funds occurs at both the government and institutional levels.

Manitoba imprudently allows millions of dollars every year to be diverted to faith-based institutions that are very expensive on a per-student basis. And now millions more have been diverted to provide small populations in the north or in community colleges with university experiences that will be marginal without massive investment outside our core universities.

At the institutional level, administrations use funds in questionable ways, rather than on core teaching and research functions. Superfluous administrators and competition among institutions for students (i.e., tuition revenues) consume sorely needed amounts, as do questionable efforts to turn universities into social service agencies or servants of business. Remarkably, given the number of well-paid administrators, there are untold costs of external consultants for negotiations, cost-cutting exercises and the like.

Faculty are far from innocent in all of this. They advocate for unnecessary programs that weaken core arts and science disciplines, promote new courses with untold costs that hold little promise of increasing enrolments, and acquiesce to the creation of new faculties that only serve to weaken academic and fiscal integrity.

These and other factors all combine to ensure the continued mediocrity of Manitoba universities, as reflected in poor Maclean’s rankings and now in the longest faculty strike in the province’s history. Unless things change markedly, Manitoba students and citizens can only expect more of the same in the future.

Jim Clark is a professor of psychology at the University of Winnipeg.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 8, 2011 A10