B.C. planning to review public post-secondary funding model

🔊 Listen to Post

Among rising costs of post-secondary education, the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training announced last month that they are planning to launch a review of how it funds operations at colleges and universities.

The review is to help ensure that institutions have the resources they need to support economic recovery and student success, and will help contribute to developing an updated funding model. 

According to the B.C. government, the current model follows a specific funding formula for general operations not including specific programs or student seats. This accounts for 75 per cent of the money the province gives B.C.’s post-secondary institutions every year. 

The current funding model has not been updated in more than 20 years, which has led to limitations and inequities for some post-secondary institutions in the province. 

Don Wright, former president of BCIT and deputy minister to the premier will be leading the engagement’s first phase-out of a two-step process. The first phase of the review will focus on contacting various organizations involved in the public post-secondary education sector to better understand the issues occurring to help fix them. 

Wright will contact student, labour, and faculty associations, the 25 post-secondary institutions in B.C., and Indigenous partners like the First Nations Leadership Council. He will provide a final report of his key findings to the government by summer 2023.

“It’s been a long time since there was any serious look at how the post-secondary sector is funded by the government,” Wright says. 

“There’s nothing wrong with doing that over a number of years, but if it goes on for too long, you begin to wonder whether that formula is really properly reflecting the realities of the year you’re in now,” he says. “We have a great system, but we always need to make it better, and that’s what I think we’re trying to do.” 

Over his career, he says certain questions came up to him that he hopes to address when beginning the review, such as affordable post-secondary education, having a variety of programs, and the importance of reconciliation for Indigenous communities. 

“By summer of [2023], what I hope to have is a good understanding of what the system has identified as the issues with the system,” Wright says. 

The second phase will be led by the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training in support of Wright and public policy professional Dan Perrin. They will review the report’s key findings to develop policy options and design an updated funding model. 

British Columbia Federation of Students (BCFS) chairperson Melissa Chirino says the organization has been advocating for a new funding model for years. 

A press release by the BCFS says that “the proportion of public funding to BC colleges and universities has dropped to 40.7% of general operating revenue and tuition fees now make up almost 51% of general operating revenue,” which drives increases in the cost of tuition.

Chrinio says this is different from the 1980s, when the provincial government was responsible for covering more than 80 per cent of institutions’ general operating funds. 

“With the rising costs of tuition, tuition fees, housing costs, transportation costs and everything else, students are struggling and institutions need to be supported more so that they’re not increasing tuition fees to make up for those gaps,” she adds. 

Chirino sees the review helping not only public post-secondary institutions but also students. She hopes that the review will help even out the costs for “community college or institutions in general” to get more support. 

“For this review, I hope to see a funding model that fairly distributes financial resources across all post-secondary institutions as a whole. We need to make sure that those [communities] are getting the support,” she says. 

“Hopefully, this will make a big difference for young people.”