“Any increase will impact a student’s ability to attend university, whether that’s big or small,”  said Mount Allison Students’ Union president Alivia Warr.

A statement from MASU acknowledged that some “key budgetary requests” were addressed – notably $100,000 for physical accessibility projects on campus – but it said the student union is “deeply disappointed” with the tuition hike.

Asked about how the government should ensure accessibility to post-secondary education, Warr said MASU doesn’t have a political stance. “We just want to work with all parties who can impact accessibility and affordability of students’ education.”

In addition to the general increase in tuition fees, there are separate increases for new aviation students, and also for residence fees and meal plans.

During legislative hearings on post-secondary education earlier this year, Mount Allison administrators said costs are rising faster than revenue, especially with rates of inflation that broke records going back four decades when they reached 8.1 per cent last year. Last month, Statistics Canada reported that the country’s annual rate of inflation had reached 4.4 per cent.

The university’s operating budget is based on a two per cent increase in a grant from the provincial government. The grant covers 44 per cent of operating revenue, with another 50 per cent from tuition and student fees.

Altogether, the university will have a $2 million operational deficit. This year marks the fourth consecutive year that Mount Allison will be in the red, according to Robert Inglis, the university’s vice-president of finance and administration. He said deficit budgets are viable “for a reasonably short period of time,” because the university has enough cash flow to cover its costs. Even with a deficit, Mount Allison isn’t yet resorting to borrowing funds at the bank, he said. “Not yet,” he added.

Recent years have been marked by deficits because of factors including the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. “We received no support, [no] external support, unlike some other jurisdictions, to deal with costs of the pandemic.”

The university has also invested money into services such as sexual violence prevention and response, along with marketing efforts meant to boost enrolment.

The provincial government has said that universities will receive another 1.5 per cent increase in their operating grant if they manage to increase enrolment by two per cent.

Mount Allison University VP finance and administration Robert Inglis (left) and Jeff Hennessy, university provost and VP academic and research, speak at a legislative committee hearing on Feb. 28, 2023. Screenshot: legnb.ca

Inglis said that for the purposes of this year’s budget, enrolment remains “essentially flat”: 700 new students are expected in the fall. Last year, 750 were expected, but only 690 showed up.

New Brunswick has witnessed “large-scale declines in [post-secondary] enrollments over the past 20 years,”  the only province in the country facing that situation, according to Higher Education Strategy Associates, a Toronto-based consulting firm.

Another feature of post-secondary education in New Brunswick is the high level of debt that students tend to hold when they graduate. Students who graduate with a bachelor’s degree in New Brunswick end their studies with an average of $40,000 in debt, the second highest rate in the country after Nova Scotia, according to 2015 data from Statistics Canada.

The Federation of New Brunswick Faculty Associations has attributed rising tuition and the heavy debt load to a gradual reduction of provincial funding for universities, at least in terms of the share of costs shouldered by the province. The group released a statement in April saying that provincial funding to New Brunswick’s public universities peaked in 1979-80 at about 82 per cent of total operating costs, a figure that declined to 56 per cent by 2019-20.

Asked about the gradual erosion of government support, Inglis said what happened in the 1980s is “ancient history.”

The head of the Mount Allison Faculty Association didn’t respond to a request for comment by publication time.