HALIFAX — The Nova Scotia government has issued funding proposals to the province's 10 universities, which have until the end of next week to sign on, says an official with the Department of Advanced Education.
However, deputy minister Tracey Barbrick wouldn’t tell reporters Wednesday whether a tuition cap will be included as part of the deals for fiscal 2025-26, saying the caps are subject to ongoing discussions with universities.
Barbrick was evasive when asked whether the two per cent cap on tuition increases for undergraduate students, imposed last year, will need to be increased to help schools raise revenue. The government last year also required most schools to raise tuition for international students a minimum of nine per cent.
“They (schools) certainly have their work cut out for them as they look at their own budgets,” she said. “So our job is to continue to monitor and to engage with them in ensuring that they are all viable.”
Barbrick said that a balance will have to be struck between meeting operating costs and keeping the cost of university accessible for most students.
The deputy minister told the legislature’s public accounts committee Wednesday that a complicating factor for new funding is the low number of foreign students who studied in the province last year. Officials said that somewhere in the vicinity of 6,000 of the 20,000 foreign students who were eligible under federal rules to study in Nova Scotia last year actually registered.
“We aren’t hitting that (federal) cap … because there has been some brand damage to Canada as it relates to immigration,” said Barbrick, who added that the province also has to do more work to market itself as a “university hub."
“It is a competitive advantage for us recognizing that just in Halifax alone there’s not a single thing you couldn’t study in this city,” she said.
Barbrick appeared before the committee to discuss a report released last month by auditor general Kim Adair that was critical of the government for not properly keeping track of the billions of dollars it has sent to universities over the last five years. Adair also called for a change to the 25-year-old funding formula for operating grants.
Officials told the committee that universities will now have to produce quarterly reports based on their progress on six financial indicators that will help the province assess their financial health. The new metrics consider such things as operating cash flows, debt servicing and year-end surpluses and deficits.
Barbrick said the government is also looking to update the funding formula over the coming year, although she said it’s a complex challenge because it would have to take into account a range of operating and economic variables.
“It is possibly the case that there will be winners and losers in that kind of a formula,” she said.
But NDP committee member Paul Wozney told reporters that he doesn’t buy that line of reasoning.
“If every university is important and every program they offer is important then it’s time to provide clearly in view — for the next 10 to 15 years — funding plans to make sure universities continue to operate,” he said.
Meanwhile, Barbrick said all of the province’s universities met the conditions placed on their funding last year and received full allocations from the province. "Over the near term,” she told reporters, all of the schools are financially viable.
“We will have to look at all of them long term as we start to use those common (financial) indicators,” Barbrick said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 9, 2025.
Keith Doucette, The Canadian Press
