Dalhousie Faculty Association report poses budget discrepancies

The Dalhousie Faculty Association (DFA) recently released an update to their 2013 “Review of Dalhousie University Finances,” incorporating a new data release since their initial report. This report is an attempt from a perspective outside of the Dalhousie Administration to understand the nature of the budget and funding within the university.

Different from the Budget Advisory Committee (BAC) consultation process being undergone, the report identifies both the Operating fund (which is the focus of the BAC) as well as Endowment, Ancillary, Capital, Special Purpose, and Research funds.

The report takes up both the lack of transparency in these other sections of the Dalhousie budget structure as well as specific funding elements.

Different responsibility centres of the university have seen their percentage of the operating funds change drastically since the 2002-2003 school year: for Academic from 73.57% to 61.89%, and for Facilities Management from 11.11% to 17.87%.

Issues regarding the way in which budget forecasting and the BAC process have conducted have also been posed, continuing a questioning stance of these processes from the initial 2013 report.

“We’ve been watching the trends, we’ve been watching the BAC, we’ve been watching tuition go up, we’ve been watching cuts been made to faculty units – the most recent cut was 2.5% across the board,” said Dr. David Mensink, the President of the Dalhousie Faculty Association. “And we said ‘Let’s just take a look at our data from 2013 and see if there is anything different now.’ What we found out is that it’s exactly the same. Everything we’ve found out in 2013 is the same today, or worse.”

The BAC report has been widely opposed by students at the public consultations, with many relating how the most recent proposed cuts and increases – especially for those within programmes facing tuition resets, Agriculture, Pharmacy, and Engineering – would lead to a situation where students cannot attend classes next year.

In contrast, the BAC, in both its shared report and in public presentation has framed that these are a needed for the university to be financially soluble in 2016-17.

The report is available online at dfa.ns.ca/review-of-dalhousie-university-finances-the-update.

This report, and all other information released by the university, province, and other parties will go on to inform the Gazette’s continued reporting about the Dalhousie BAC process currently being undertaken.