Advanced Education Minister discusses PSE issues facing universities for 2009

In the face of a new year and new challenges, higher education in Alberta will have to search for its place in the provincial political landscape. Last week, the Gateway sat down with MLA Doug Horner, Minister of Advanced Education and Technology, to find out what students can expect for postsecondary education in 2009.

What are the biggest challenges facing postsecondary eduction this year?

We’ve had some tremendous capacity increases over the last two years in terms of seats and spaces throughout the system. Right now we’ve got $1.5 billion worth of construction ongoing. If you look at the U of A and the campus, there’s, I think, six cranes running around over there right now; you’ve got the Edmonton Clinic, the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, a number of very interesting projects on the way. So this year, the challenge is going to be, given the economic situation that we have, to not lose any ground and that we actually maintain the space availability that we plan for in the health sciences, in engineering, [and] in the middle sciences.

Can students expect any new initiatives to be introduced this year?

Yes. We’re looking at the launch of the Apply Alberta System [which] should be rolling out in the next couple of weeks as a trial. It’s a one-window approach to applications. So if you’re going to apply to any one of Campus Alberta’s [institutions], you only have to fill out your online information once and that immediately is populated onto the website application of the institutions, so you don’t have to keep doing it all the time.

Deferred maintenance is a major issue hitting Alberta campuses. How do you plan to address this in 2009?

We did a considerable amount in 2008. We actually doubled the infrastructure and maintenance program funding. It’s the annual funding that the university gets and we doubled that last year, and that’s an ongoing commitment, so it’s doubling again this year. We did something in the range of $350 million worth of deferred maintenance projects last year.

We have a tremendous amount of new capital coming in to the postsecondary system this year. You’ll start to see some of the construction projects complete. And then you’re looking at operating dollars for that too. So we have a number of different commitments and we’ll make sure that we maintain them. And there’s a number of different maintenance projects that would have been funded last year but will actually be undertaken this year.

A primary concern for students is tuition. What can students expect in terms of affordability in 2009?

I made a commitment to the students that if there was going to be a change to our [existing] policy around capping it to the consumer price index (CPI), then we would have a fairly major consultation about that. The reason we’re not having such a consultation is because there’s no desire to change that policy right now, nor do we in the foreseeable future see that as being an issue. The issue for the university is whether or not the funding that will match the gap between what the CPI is and what they believe their cost increases are. We’ve been actually covering that gap for the students over the last three years. But as far as the tuition cap for students at CPI, that remains in 2009.

Are there any initiatives being undertaken to address concerns about large classes?

Remember that the student is in a cost-plus business. Because you’re paying a piece of the pie—you’re paying about 20 per cent for what it actually costs for the education you get—taxpayers of Alberta are paying the other 80 per cent. In other words, whatever the cost is, that’s what we’re trying to recover. We’re not trying to make money out of it; we’re just trying to recover the cost. So saying that I’m going to cap the number of students in a classroom would increase costs dramatically, which then takes away from my space allocation, because now you’ll pay more for the same space. So there’s a delicate balance that we have to attain there. And from a student perspective, we have to attain it so that you can get the appropriate quality of education, but at a reasonable cost.

What are some specific concerns regarding residences that you’re trying to address?

The biggest concern for residences, believe it or not, is the fact that they might sit empty. In order for them to pay the way, so to speak, the business case is developed that the students will actually stay there, therefore there are dollars created for long-term maintenance. And I would say that the biggest concern that our postsecondary institutions have is expenditure of capital on a residence that isn’t full.

We saw it here not too long ago with Grant MacEwan. [They] built a brand new residence and it was only 75 per cent full in the first couple of years. We have a lot of nervous people about that. Then of course we had the housing boom in Edmonton and everything was crammed, so there was no concern about a 100 per cent occupancy, but at the same time, who would have predicted that we would have had the economic situation we have today?

We have to develop a system where we bring in partnerships, that where we have economic downturns like we have today and there’s availability because the rental market is starting to loosen up a fair bit, that the universities or the colleges are not left holding the bag in terms of the risk, nor should the taxpayer. And I think there’s ways that we can get around that. And those are the kinds of proposals that we’re hoping to get from the groups that are working on that right now.