Quality

Our province needs a post-secondary system of the highest quality - with faculty that are world leaders in their discipline, support staff that are given the tools to provide the vital services the campus community needs, and students that are given the opportunity to meet their full potential. Alberta should be investing more in its post-secondary institutions by meeting the standard OECD post-secondary investment-to-GDP ratio, guaranteeing that the quality of post-secondary education is second to none, and producing the graduates and the ideas our province will need for the future.

The Problems:

The past five years of investment in post-secondary education have been put into jeopardy by government cuts and a reduction in the quality of education at our institutions. In 2010, the Government of Alberta cut operating funding by 2% and has already told institutions not to expect additional funding in 2011, despite having grown by 5,726 full-load equivalents last year alone. The result of these cuts has been layoffs, reduced course offerings, furlough days for faculty and staff, wage and hiring freezes and a reality that at our campuses everybody is expected to do more with fewer resources.

The Changes Needed:

With the lowest post-secondary participation rate in Canada, it is clear that Alberta needs to create more spaces, but we also need to ensure that those spaces are not simply stuffing another student into a lecture hall. Each new space must be supported with additional faculty and staff, and our universities, colleges and technical institutes must be able to compete for the best academic and non-academic staff in the global market.

Improving quality also means attracting and funding additional graduate students to our universities. Graduate students are the often overlooked workhorses of our university campuses, not merely learning but also performing research and teaching in the classroom.

We also cannot forget the important role research plays within our post-secondary system. Alberta’s universities, colleges and technical institutes do not just teach, but they create new knowledge as well, and stimulate economic growth by applying that new knowledge in both the private and public sectors. Alberta needs to invest in Alberta Innovates and ensure that our research environment is collaborative and focused on serving the public interest.

Solutions for improving the quality of post-secondary education in Alberta:

• Create more quality spaces for students at Alberta’s public universities, colleges and technical institutes.
• Expand the number of faculty and staff in order to improve the quality of our public post-secondary education system.
• Increase funding for graduate students at Alberta’s universities.