As of March 31, 2014, Memorial University had an annual deficit of about $330 million.
In 2013-2014, the annual cost of subsidising tuition for out-of-province students at Memorial was $112 million.
The provincial government operation subsidy to the university has doubled since 2004.
Those are a few of snippets from the Auditor General’s 2014 report.
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As students head back to Memorial University, you can see the impact the ongoing tuition freeze is having on the university’s budget.
You can see it in the policy to pass credit card handling fees on to students. In the official university organ – the Gazette – the university claimed it eliminated the fee. That’s not true. The fees still get paid. The university just transferred responsibility for paying them directly to students who want to pay fees using a credit card. According to a November 2012 story in the Telegram, the university expected to recover about $550,000 by making students pay the extra fees.
That seems like such a measly sum compared to the university budget, but when the administration has very few ways of raising capital, they have to squeeze every penny until the Old Girl screams.
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Related:
A college or university education has an undeniable value both to the student and to the society as a whole.
But should either party bear a disproportionate share of the cost of the education?
Of course not. The challenge for policy makers in the provincial government and at the university and the colleges in the province is how to strike a balance between the two. The one that’s been in place for the past decade works extremely well for students whose representatives – not surprisingly – are pushing for an even sweeter and sweeter deal regardless of the financial implications to the university and the provincial government.
Free tuition is fundamentally unworkable. There’s no reason to believe that free tuition would improve participation rates, successful completion rates, or any other desirable outcome for society. By the same token, forcing students to bear the full cost of tuition up front would likely serve as a powerful deterrent since few individuals and families could afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars post-secondary education costs these days.
There might be an alternative.