Group calls for education funding boost
Many who lost their job due to COVID-19 can’t afford training: report
Ottawa needs to address the funding and access problems regarding post-secondary education that have been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a coalition of university faculty, student and labour groups.
Rising tuition coupled with pandemic-induced unemployment is reducing access to education and training, the coalition says in its report, called “Education for All,” released Tuesday. Many people who have lost their jobs in the past year are unable to afford the training that could help them get back to work, it says.
“The pandemic has just brought everything into focus. It’s magnified and it’s concentrated the inequities that we’ve been jumping up and down for a while,” Brenda Austin-Smith, president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, said in a recent interview.
The coalition, which also includes the Canadian Federation of Students, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the National Union of Public and General Employees, is asking Ottawa to increase transfers for post-secondary education by at least $3 billion a year.
That permanent increase would bring the federal contribution per student back to 1992 levels, it says.
“Canada is 27 out of 33 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries when it comes to the proportion of public funding that goes into post-secondary,” Austin-Smith said. “We’re behind Greece, we’re behind Turkey.”
Currently, 47 per cent of funding for post-secondary education comes from government sources, she said, down from 70 per cent in late 1970s.
“Average domestic undergraduate tuition has increased by 215 per cent since 1980, after accounting for inflation,” the report says.
The federal government said it’s already providing significant support to universities and students.
“Our government is supporting post-secondary students who are feeling the economic impacts of COVID-19,” John Power, spokesperson for Innovation, Science and Industry minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, said in an email. “This includes action to directly support students, as well as the important research work being done in universities and health institutes.”
Power said that in May, the government announced $450 million in funding “to help Canada’s academic community sustain Canada’s research excellence and protect our research talent.”