History & Successes

The Task Force on Post-Secondary Education was one of Public Interest Alberta’s first task forces, brought together in response to the Government of Alberta’s A Learning Alberta review of post-secondary education in 2005. Our task force was a full participant in the government’s review, and solicited the opinions of Albertans at campuses across the province through a listening tour, which culminated in a conference in Edmonton in mid 2006. A Learning Alberta marked the beginning of a period of re-investment on our campuses by the Government of Alberta, and we saw growth in enrolment and the hiring of new academic and non-academic staff.

We also produced Where to From Here?, a white paper in response to the final report of A Learning Alberta in 2006. We argued that the conclusions asserted by the review were not far-reaching enough, and that the system would require a period of sustained investment rather than one-time funding announcements. Until 2010, the government responded with additional funding each year, but that progress is now threatened with deep cuts in the 2010 provincial budget and the accompanying layoffs, reduced course selection, increased student debt and a drop in quality of education offered in our institutions.

Our task force responded by launching the Don’t Cut Us Out campaign and joining other groups in Alberta in the Join Together Alberta campaign, which makes the case for reinvestment in public services during the recession rather than deep public service cuts.