Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides meets with board members and staff at MHC (Photo by Colton McKee)

By Hayley Ferguson

Minister Visits MHC

Minister of Advanced Education talks future of post-secondary at Medicine Hat College

Sep 12, 2019 | 4:42 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – Alberta’s Minister of Advanced Education has been touring around the province visiting universities and colleges this month.

Today, Minister Demetrios Nicolaides was in the gas city, visiting the Medicine Hat College to meet with board members, staff, and students.

“You can read about an institution and read about the program, and the dynamics of student popular on paper. But you don’t really get a good feel unless you have the opportunity to come down to campus.” He explained.

His stop in Medicine Hat comes just a week after the McKinnon Panel report recommended the freeze on tuition be ended.

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According to the report, Alberta spent $5.6 billion in 2018-19 on post-secondary education.

Nicolaides says that kind of investment isn’t being matched by enrolment and employment numbers.

“It is certainly alarming. As I mentioned just a moment ago we do have the most expensive post-secondary system in the entire country and we don’t appear to be getting strong results. So we have to take a very close look at why the system is overspending.” He said.

When asked about the challenge in cutting costs for the province and making sure post-secondary is affordable for all, Nicolaides said he believes it can be done.

“That’s the real challenging conversation that needs to happen and the real difficult decisions. Obviously, we need to balance them. We need to explore.” He continued. “I believe there are more effective mechanisms and means to increasing enrolment.”

Nicolaides added that the province is still working on its budget and that possible cuts to post-secondary would become clearer once it was released.

“We’re in the process of working with our colleagues in finance and with treasury board. As are all of the departments as we put our plans together as we prepare for the upcoming fall budget. There’s still a lot of things we’re working through but once we have that budget then we will be able to have a lot more clarity.”

The province has not yet released a date for the unveiling of its fall budget.