Faced with a $4.7 billion budget deficit, the Alberta government is freezing the operating grants for post-secondary institutions after years of steadily increasing investment. The freeze is part of a 6 per cent overall cut for the province’s advanced education ministry that also marks changes to student assistance programs and allocates less money for capital expenses and for research and innovation.

Linda Bonneville, president of the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations, said increases to operating funds has helped transform the post-secondary sector in recent years, but the shortfall in the government’s latest budget is certain to mean higher fees, bigger classes, fewer programs and fewer staff at Alberta’s universities, colleges and institutes.

“Given the crucial role that post-secondary education is expected to play in our future, there is no doubt that any short-term savings achieved in this way will cost Albertans dearly in years to come,” Bonneville said.

The Alberta Colleges and Institutes Faculties Association president Dave Purkis said news of the unexpected reductions was discouraging. Cuts in funding undermine the ability of post-secondary institutions to provide a certain quality and quantity of programs, he said.

“This puts huge strains on their operations, and results in problems such as deferred maintenance and employee layoffs, problems which accumulate and leave institutions constantly trying to catch up,” he said.

Students will also see a decrease in grants and scholarships for post-secondary education and loan limits increasing.

“The government has eliminated some programs designed to assist low-income students and has changed the guidelines to allow students to increase their student loans. The net effect will be to shift more of the cost of post-secondary education directly onto the student,” Purkis said. “Students are going to be graduating with higher debt levels, and more debt means fewer poor students going on to higher education.”

The budget cut grants, scholarships and bursaries by $54 million, replacing the money with loans.

Bonneville says the province established the principles of accessibility, affordability and quality as fundamental to its post-secondary education policy.

“But the fact is that the government cannot hope to deliver on its long-standing commitment to expand access to the Alberta post-secondary system, and to keep it affordable, while preserving its quality, if it fails to provide the necessary funding,” she said.

The province has pledged to add 16,000 new student spaces by 2011­–12.

“Despite the immediate threat of downsizing, the government apparently remains committed to its ambitious plans,” Bonneville said. “Yet doing ‘more with less’ is not an option.

“We’ve been down this road before — indeed, by some measures we still haven’t recovered fully from the funding cuts of the 1990s.”