British Columbia goes to the polls on October 19th, and so it’s time to take a look at what the parties are saying about universities, colleges, and students. You’re about to get a lot of these because we have three provincial elections going on simultaneously (New Brunswick votes on the 21st and Saskatchewan on the 29th).
Warning, though: This might be the simplest election platform analysis I’ve ever done because there’s just so little on offer.
Let’s start with the newest iteration of the province’s anti-NDP coalition, the BC Conservatives (spiritual descendants of both the BC Liberals and the BC Social Credit Party), because their thinking on post-secondary education is the most easily summarized. And that summary is: Bupkis. Diddly-squat. Thunderous silence. A playlist where John Cage’s 4’33” is on infinite repeat. An empty void.
It’s not just that the BC Conservative’s economic thinking seems to be perfectly tailored to the 1950s in that the bits of the economy that matter are the rock sector, the farm sector and the tree sector. Knowledge and service sectors? Might as well not exist. Any party that believes that probably isn’t going to be that interested in postsecondary education. But what’s really amazing is that it can’t even make the link between the tree and rock sectors and skilled trades in colleges, which you’d think would be a slam dunk. And yet.
Then there’s the platform of the governing New Democrats, who are basically running on their record. The party makes only one new commitment to post-secondary education, and that it intends to double the supply of red-seal certified workers, which implies doubling (at least) the number of apprenticeship spaces. It is not at all clear, however, that the party is budgeting anywhere near enough to make this a reality. Costing is only done for thematic groups of promises, and while $500 million or so is allocated over the next two fiscals for “making housing more affordable,” the portion of this specifically allocated for trades training is completely opaque. However, given that the big bottleneck in most skilled trades training is inadequate facilities requiring big increased in capital expenditures, I would be extremely surprised if this promise was even vaguely adequately resourced.
Other than that, there are no commitments either to post-secondary institutions or students. That said, in government the NDP has been relatively generous. On the student side it created a new student grant worth $35 million/year. On the institutional side, it has been by far the most generous government in the country over the past five years in terms of institutional funding. Of course, it has been fairly directed funding – it’s almost all i) paying for higher faculty and staff salaries or ii) paying for a new medical school at Simon Fraser. That’s not nothing, of course. But neither does it suggest that the NDP has any specific ambitions from the system, other than ensuring the well paid quasi-public servants remain well-paid quasi-public servants.
Finally, and maybe most frustratingly, there is the Green Party Manifesto. It’s much more narratively based than the other parties. And when they talk about post-secondary, it seems like they kind of get it. For example:
“The rising cost of living and tuition has made further education out of reach for many.” “We must work toward a future where every BC resident, regardless of income, can access higher education and vocational training.” “A well-educated, well-equipped workforce will create the conditions for everyone in BC to thrive.” The provinces is “not spending enough” and it is “crucial for the province to invest”
Wow. So, good news for institutions? Well, no, not really. There is a commitment to create a dedicated fund to support First Nations-mandated institutions, but no commitment to greater funding for anyone else in the system, except insofar as to spend money on sexual violence prevention. Instead – and stop me if you’ve heard this one before – their main priorities are to make education cheaper for students: bigger BC Access Grants with wider eligibility criteria, more loan forgiveness for students in in-demand professions, etc.
In sum: you’d have to reckon that based on their record the NDP is likeliest to at least keep the status quo intact, despite the lack of any promises in the area. The Conservatives would seemingly prefer to pretend the sector does not exist, and the Greens may “get it” but they seem curiously unable to commit to anything that would “improve it.” Which I suspect is part of a broader failure of the postsecondary sector to connect with politicians in the age of Eating the Future.
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Yep, that’s pretty well it. One note is that NDP promised the wildfire education and training centre connected with TRU. BC United had their Wildfire Prevention and Response Institute which was the same thing, but partnered with TRU in Kamloops and a secondary location in Prince George partnered with UNBC.
The BC Conservatives however have said absolutely nothing about it, but have talked about changing where funding for wildfire goes, that they want to abandon the wildfire management strategy the NDP and previous Liberals used. That together with their call to cut budgets, without specifying what parts, makes me think they plan to scrap the wildfire centre/institute.