Manitoba drops ideas to tie write-up-secondary schooling funding to performance

The Manitoba governing administration claims it’s backing off controversial plans to tie funding for universities and faculties to performance metrics immediately after numerous college stakeholders elevated fears. 

In latest years, the Progressive Conservative federal government has repeatedly signalled its intention to take a look at some form of effectiveness-centered funding model for put up-secondary schooling, tying funding dollars to metrics these types of as university student completion rates and graduate employability instead of its current lump-sum grant payment process. 

That was in response to a 2020 auditor general’s report that instructed government oversight more than post-secondary universities was lacking.

Very last calendar year, the province launched a session procedure on what it called a article-secondary accountability framework, which it proposed could include performance metrics and linking effectiveness with funding.

A letter from Sophisticated Education and Schooling Minister Sarah Guillemard to university stakeholders, dated April 28, suggests the provincial governing administration is even now wanting into ways to raise accountability for write-up-secondary institutions, but tying funding to effectiveness-centered metrics will not be a aspect of it. 

“We have read your considerations with regards to linking general performance primarily based metrics to funding,” Guillemard’s letter reported.

The Progressive Conservative government “has taken a step back and revaluated some factors of this task, which includes the proposal to introduce an results-based funding process as element of the post-secondary accountability framework,” she reported.

A spokesperson for Guillemard confirmed on Tuesday that the letter went out to write-up-secondary institutions final Friday.

Many university stakeholders beforehand elevated problems about the program, saying it could have unintended, detrimental effects. 

For case in point, if universities and colleges are below stress to get a lot more pupils to graduate inside of a precise time frame, they could grow to be significantly less available for some pupils, due to the fact establishments could then prioritize those people who are most probable to graduate, explained Scott Forbes, president of the Manitoba Corporation of Faculty Associations. 

“That tends to make their metrics appear superior on paper, but what it does is it raises boundaries to traditionally marginalized pupils,” he claimed, including that research has also demonstrated that these versions do not often make post-secondary establishments a lot more economical, both. 

“So, the reality that it lessens accessibility, the point that it doesn’t do the job, it was from our perspective a non-starter from the get-go.”

There had been also fears that this sort of a program could influence institutions to prioritize certain courses at the expense of other individuals, said Peter Miller, president of the College of Winnipeg College Association. 

“We’re normally anxious about anything that could maybe direct students to acquire certain applications or interfere with the autonomy of institutions to set up the applications they want,” he stated. 

Accountability measures 

Moving forward, Guillemard promised extra consultations, including an on line public survey later this calendar year, as the province explores other measures to strengthen accountability for universities and colleges. 

“We want to … focus on checking out what accountability appears to be like and what actions would be acceptable to partners in this field so that we can deal with the … [auditor general’s] suggestions collectively,” Guillemard’s letter mentioned.

Forbes, with Manitoba Group of College Associations, claimed he supported these initiatives, especially in mild of the fiscal crisis that gripped Laurentian College in Sudbury, Ont., which submitted for insolvency in February 2021.

“We are 100 per cent in arrangement with bigger accountability, bigger economical accountability, so every person can glimpse at the publications and see what the real point out of the financial problem of our universities is.”

A spokesperson for the University of Manitoba explained the university has, and carries on to have, successful conversations with the minister around these proposed accountability steps.