MAFA President Laurie Ricker. MAFA represents about 150 full-time and 60 part-time academic faculty, librarians, and archivists at Mt. A.

The President of the Mount Allison Faculty Association (MAFA) says she agrees with MLA Megan Mitton that the government’s proposals for cutting university and community college budgets are ludicrous.

“I mean it was everything but the kitchen sink thrown into a two-page memo,” Laurie Ricker said Wednesday during an online interview with Warktimes.

“As far as the privatization of Mt. A. is concerned, it’s simply not feasible, not something that would happen overnight,” she said.

Ricker added that as a longer-term proposal, it would not solve the government’s immediate deficit problems.

“So, whether it happens or not, it’s still preposterous and ludicrous,” she said.

“I think the government is grabbing at ideas without any serious study as to how this will work or how viable it will be,” said Geoff Martin, a Mt. A. politics professor who serves as MAFA’s executive director.

He said the university would probably need endowment funds of at least half a billion dollars to generate enough interest to replace the $27 million annual provincial grant.

“And where’s that money coming from?” he asks.

(According to CBC, Premier Holt made comments on social media posts Tuesday indicating that the government would not privatize Mt. A., but Warktimes hasn’t been able to confirm this.)

Gov’t proposes 10% cut

Ricker said that the 10% across-the-board cut for all universities and colleges that the government is proposing would mean a loss of $2.5 million for Mt. A. at a time when the university is already running a deficit.

She also questioned why the government seems to be putting so much emphasis on skills training in its two-page document.

Ricker, who teaches mathematics and computer science, said students at Mt. A. spend their first two years learning how to write computer programs and solve problems.

“They learn to be resilient in the face of ‘Oh, I’ve never seen this kind of problem before. How do I solve it?'”

MAFA Executive Director Geoff Martin

Martin noted that community college students can complete their two-year computer technology programs and continue their studies at university.

“There are pathways to getting both vocational training and higher education,” he said.

“Education is about being trained, but it’s also about coping with future change and coping with being able to move from one profession to another or one job to another, being able to make the adjustments, having the numeracy and literacy skills and the knowledge of history and things like that, that can help you see patterns and help you adjust and then, not need retraining,” he said.

“At universities, we make decisions based on evidence, studying reports and weighing information,” Ricker says, “and these were two pieces of paper with no evidence behind them or any grounds for making those decisions. Ludicrous.”

Students call for meeting

Meantime, New Brunswick’s seven students’ unions issued a news release on Tuesday calling for a meeting with government officials to discuss the proposed cuts.

The release points out that tuition for full-time undergraduate students is getting close to $10,000 per year, among the highest in the country.

The students add that cuts of $35-$50 million would have consequences for communities across the province:

Reductions of this scale typically lead to tuition increases, program closures and job losses. When a campus shrinks, local housing markets, small businesses, research participants, and community services shrink with it. In a province already struggling with low enrolment and graduate retention, contraction does not solve the problem; it risks hollowing out the very institutions that sustain our workforce, our regional economies, and the future of our communities.

NOTE: Tantramar Treasurer Michael Beal says the province pays municipal taxes on behalf of Mt. A. This year, the town will receive about $2,782,500 from the province amounting to 16.28% of Tantramar’s total tax revenue.

To read the students’ news release, click here.