MED SCHOOL CASH CRISIS
Deficit worries NDP critic
The Saskatchewan Party government’s failure to adequately fund post-secondary education is threatening the University of Saskatchewan medical school’s ability to renew its accreditation and continue operating, according to Ryan Meili, a former student and professor at the college who now serves in the Opposition NDP.
The college must in October demonstrate to accreditors that it has stable financial resources. But the government’s decision to withhold $40 million in targeted funding over the last two years, and then force the university to prop up the cash-strapped college with $20 million from its operating grant this year, has led to a “damaging ” $57 million shortfall, Meili said.
“Ultimately, we need an accredited College of Medicine if we’re going to have a College of Medicine,” said Meili, who acts as the NDP’s advanced education critic.
“We have to meet the standards of financial stability, as well as the other organizational and educational standards. If we don’t do that, serially, we could wind up not having a College of Medicine.”
The College of Medicine has long been a concern for the university. It is the only North American medical school to have twice been placed on probation by accreditation authorities. In its latest operations forecast, which paints a bleak picture of the college’s financial situation, the university said a third probation “would be unprecedented.”
Preston Smith, who was appointed dean in 2014, acknowledged that the college was running a surplus when he took over and attributed the shortfall to the cost of transforming it into “a modern medical school.” The situation was “exacerbated” by the loss of the $40 million in targeted funding, the university said in its operations forecast.
The accreditors are deans, vicedeans and faculty members from other Canadian medical schools, who understand the costs associated with running such an institution, but will want to see a plan for how the College of Medicine will manage its finances through 201819 when they arrive, Smith added.
Despite Smith’s confidence that the province “will come through in the long run,” it remains unclear if the government will provide the college with the $17.3 million it says it needs to continue operating and begin paying down its deficit next year. Advanced Education Minister Bronwyn Eyre said this week that the decision will be part of the next budget cycle.
Pointing to an annual funding increase of more than $100 million since the Saskatchewan Party took power in 2007, Eyre said there is no question the government supports the university and all of its colleges. At the same time, she said the medical school should find “new and different ways” to address its fiscal challenges.
Smith told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix this week, however, that despite doing its utmost to boost revenues and cut costs, the college cannot hope to cover the shortfall on its own. Meili agreed, noting that the medical school “runs a tight ship,” and that its loss would be “a huge step backwards” for the province.
“I think it would be a very simple decision for this government to make, to put that $20 million back (into the college) and say, ‘Yes, the College of Medicine matters and its accreditation matters and it’s not up to the rest of the university to backfill that when we’ve been shorting it.’
“That is something they can do now; we don’t have to wait until October.”
Asked where that money should come from, Meili acknowledged that the government, which is trying to halve a $1.2 billion deficit this year, faces difficult decisions. At the same time, cuts to essential services such as health care and education inevitably “cost you more in the long run,” he said.
“The College of Medicine, bridging as it does health and education, is an essential part of that.”