Students walks to and from class at Medicine Hat College Thursday afternoon (Photo by Ross Lavigne)

By Charles Lefebvre

Medicine Hat College

College examining MacKinnon Report for potential impacts

Sep 5, 2019 | 4:40 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Executives with Medicine Hat College, as well as its students’ association, are currently taking a wait and see approach to recommendations made in the MacKinnon Report released this week.

The Blue Ribbon Report on the province’s finances includes several recommendations for Advanced Education to help the province achieve a balanced budget.

The panel is recommending the government work with post-secondary stakeholders across the province, “to achieve a revenue mix comparable to that in British Columbia and Ontario, including less reliance on government grants, more funding from tuition and alternative revenue sources, and more entrepreneurial approaches to how programs are financed and delivered,” the report reads. “This includes lifting the current freeze on tuition fees.”

CHAT News reached out to the Ministry of Advanced Education for a comment on the report, who provided us with a statement.

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“The government thanks the panel members for their work and will be using this report to inform upcoming budget decisions,” the statement reads. “The report clearly shows Alberta has a critical and long-standing over-spending problem.”

Kevin Shufflebotham, president of Medicine Hat College, says members of the executive team are studying the report, though he notes nothing has been decided yet by the province.

“That’s the important point, they are just recommendations,” he said. “What’s important to us is to really understand how it impacts the college, and if the government chooses to accept them, what we are going to do with that.”

Shufflebotham says approximately half of the college’s budget comes from provincial grants, with the other half coming from tuition and donations.

A tuition freeze has been in place at post-secondary institutions across the province since 2015. The Ministry of Advanced Education, in a statement sent to CHAT News this afternoon, confirmed the freeze will remain in place for this academic year.

Shufflebotham says the college will work with what the province decides to do.

“We want to work with government, our mandate is really to support the community and students that we serve,” he said. “So, whatever the structures are in place the government’s are putting out, we’ll abide by those.”

Anushka Sharma, vice-president external with the Students’ Association of Medicine Hat College, says the association will continue to advocate for accessible learning, including fair tuition.

“It is definitely very important for our economy and for like everyone, to have equal and affordable access to post-secondary education,” she said.

Sharma says a tuition freeze can help students in the province, noting it adds certainty to education costs. She says the Students’ Association at the college, along with the Alberta Student Executive Council (ASEC), will be advocating for affordable education through the year.

“The Students’ Association will be advocating for accessible, predictable and incremental increases in tuition,” she said. “We do not mind lifting of the tuition freeze yet, but as long as it’s affordable for students, and they know how much the increase will be, it makes post-secondary education in Alberta very much accessible and acceptable.”

Like the college, the Students’ Association says it will be keeping an eye on the provincial budget for what the province decides to do with post-secondary education funding.

According to the report, the province spent $5.6 billion on advanced education in last year’s budget, approximately 11 per cent of the total budget.