Province could add to pot to help pay UPEI faculty

originally from

The Guardian (Charlottetown)

Fri 07 Apr 2006

More cash could be flowing to UPEI to help the university pay for the salary
increases for its 375 professors and librarians.

Education Minister Mildred Dover says she's prepared to consider additional funding to the university, over and above the $1.25- million increase given to UPEI in last week's budget, to help offset the salary hikes agreed to by the university.

The university agreed to pay the professors and librarians an additional 15 per cent over the next five years. The salary hikes were part of a package agreed to Wednesday that ended a 15-day-old strike.

Dover said she doesn't know how much money the university will need to cover the salary increases, but she supports the university's efforts to ensure tuition doesn't increase above traditional levels.

"Although we haven't talked about how much money we can give the university, certainly we're pleased to see the strike is over and we'll be more than willing to work with president (Wade) MacLauchlan to help him through this situation," Dover said in an interview with The Guardian.

"Now, I know we don't have an open chequebook here, but yet we will work with the president to see what we can do to make sure this situation comes to a final, total, successful conclusion."

Over the past decade, the average tuition increase has been 6.3 per cent.
The board of governors at UPEI are now working to finalize next year's budget, which will include tuition rates for the 2006-07 school year.

The UPEI president said the university is determined to keep tuition hikes in line with other years. That leaves the university with only one other source of funding - the province. "We don't see shifting a larger share of the burden to the students,"
said MacLauchlan. "What we would really aim for is to work out a multi-year funding plan and one that is on a scale that allows the university to continue to
have the success that we've had." But the UPEI president said he'd also like to see the federal government step up to the plate with more funding for post- secondary education. MacLauchlan said the final costs of the new contract are still being
finalized.

The university did experience some savings by not having to pay its professors and librarians over the past two weeks. That money is going to be redirected to student recruitment and enrolment."If you take the total costs of faculty and support and other salaries today, and benefits, it's fully 73 per cent of our budget."
Students spent most of the day Thursday hitting the books and trying to
figure out their exam schedule.

Matt MacDonald, a 19-year-old arts student from Charlottetown, said he's disappointed with how much is being crammed into these final couple of days. "With returning to my morning class (Thursday) at 8:30 we were given a quick review for a test that has been rescheduled to Saturday morning at 8:30 . . . after the review we were given a wrap-up of the last four chapters that were never taught to us," he said. "We covered a mere 65 years of history in a nice 45- minute class. I really enjoyed the 45 minutes dedicated to the Second World War, the Cold War, globalism, nationalism, the Vietnam War, and several themes of the effects of Communism on Europe and several others that I couldn't even gather in the short period of time allocated to it."

Opposition Leader Robert Ghiz said the P.E.I. government has not been keeping pace with the increasing costs of post-secondary education. Quoting from a Statistics Canada report, Ghiz said in 1995-96 the province handed nearly $17,000 per student to post-secondary institution. That's now down to $7,000 per student. The Liberal leader said he's fearful tuition will increase substantially, not only because of the new contract reached with professors but because of the province's serious underfunding of UPEI and Holland College.

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