KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – The Association of Nova Scotia University Teachers (ANSUT) hopes that findings in the Nova Scotia Auditor General’s report, Funding to Universities: Department of Advanced Education, do not detract attention from Bill 12, currently awaiting second reading in the NS Legislature. The report confirms that the department is “not effectively funding, monitoring, or holding universities accountable for public funds” and ANSUT fears that enacting Bill 12 will take accountability too far the other way.
“Financial accountability is imperative,” says ANSUT president, Scott Stewart, of the $1.9 billion in operating funds universities have received in the past five years. “But going from little accountability to unilateral control by one person does not seem the best solution. There needs to be a middle ground, and one that considers that the importance and specific traits of the collegial governance model by which universities are administered. Yet there is only a passing reference in the AG’s report, and nothing in the Universities Accountability and Sustainability Act, that even mentions the fact that universities need to consider both sides of a bicameral governance model to achieve the mission of the university.”
The report confirms that universities are independent organizations, and the department is a funding partner who contributes roughly 33 percent to university operating grants. This varies by university, with tuition and other revenues such as student housing and research accounting for the remaining 67 percent. “But under Bill 12, the Minister of Advanced Education wants the power to appoint up to 50 percent of the Board,” says Stewart. “Can you imagine the outcry if students – those who pay the majority of university funding – were to make the same demand?”
“It’s also interesting to note that the department has no explanation for the annual one percent increase awarded to universities,” says Stewart. Increases have not kept pace with inflation. Funding has fallen from over 70 percent (nationally) in the 1980s to 47 percent in 2018, to just 33 percent in Nova Scotia in 2025. “In that regard, we agree with the recommendation that the department identify new funding options, but urge our administrators and department officials to consider that no amount of government oversight or new avenues of revenue will fix the core problem of university’s sustainability; namely, the deterioration of public funding.”
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