REGINA - Post-secondary educational institutions are receiving a financial boost from the province in operating funding.
The province confirmed it providing a one-time top-up of $12 million in operating funding to post-secondary education institutions in the 2024-25 budget. That is up 2.2 per cent over last year.
The funding is coming through an amendment to the current four-year funding agreement already in place between the government and post-secondary institutions.
The documents to amend the agreement were signed at a ceremony at the University of Regina Tuesday involving Minister of Advanced Education Gordon Wyant, University of Regina President and Vice-Chancellor Jeff Keshen, and Great Plains College President and chair of CEO Council Brad Mahon.
While they signed their names to the documents Tuesday, other post-secondary institutions are also seeing increased funding including the University of Saskatchewan and Sask Polytech.
The province is entering the fourth and final year of the current funding agreement with post-secondary educational institutions, one which Keshen and Wyant said is meant to ensure both "stability" and "predictability" in funding to those institutions.
But Wyant also acknowledged there have been challenges with inflation, which led to this top-up announcement.
"This is the fourth year of the agreement; according to the terms of the agreement funding would’ve been flat in this last year," Wyant said. "So I felt as opposed to executing a new four-year funding agreement, (that) we provide a top-up this year as we move forward to negotiate and execute a new four-year funding agreement. So what we’ll end up doing is looking at some of the benefits of four-year funding agreements, some of the difficulties or the challenges that were posed through that experience, and address those as we move forward to establish a new agreement for another four years."
The expection is that a new four year funding agreement will come together in the coming months. Wyant told reporters they are “actively in conversations with all our post-secondary partners around what this four-year funding agreement will look like and we’re very optimistic that we’re going to come to terms with our institutions in the next period of time.”
The agreement that was signed Tuesday “is certainly very welcome,” President Keshen said to reporters.
"The increase in our base for next year is a bonus out of the four-year system. It was frozen under the original MOU, so that’s a real fantastic addition that we have to the university’s budget along with our record enrolment so we can reinvest in what’s most important, students, and also the amount that we received in extra capital support. A cooling tower replacement, our wellness centre is going to expand for students — we’re going to see progress in the number of areas that’s going to be important for the student experience."
The University of Regina is seeing $6.3 million for the cooling tower replacement and $610,000 to expand the student health care centre at the University of Regina. Other capital funding to other institutions from the 2024-25 budget includes $8.7 million for electrical infrastructure upgrades at the University of Saskatchewan and $6 million for planning work for the new Saskatchewan Polytechnic campus in Saskatoon.
Last week in the provincial budget, Advanced Education saw a total investment of $793 million, up $28.2 million or 3.7 per cent from the year before, with $724 million in operating and capital grants this year.
