Dawn Russell, the President of St. Thomas University, alleges that the liberal government is not willing to help the Fredericton School. The University says that the government is treating them unfairly when it comes to allotting support to the universities.
The STU president says that the government is providing more support to students who are not from the province. He alleges that the students of Mount Allison University are getting $2,125 more than the students from St. Thomas, New Brunswick.
According to him, Mount Allison has only 39% students from New Brunswick. They receive $ 9,388 for each student in the form of provincial support. The St. Thomas University has more than 73% students from the province and a student receives only $7, 263 as support.
Russel feels that paying more money to out-of-province students at Mount Allison is totally unfair. Citing this reason St. Thomas has not signed the funding memo understanding between them and the province. According to STU, the grant it receives for annual operations is $ 1.4m less than actually required.
Roger Melanson, the Minister for post-secondary education, defended the government action by saying that the enrollment numbers have gone down a lot for St. Thomas in recent years.
STU said that in the last five years all the universities in the province had low enrollment. Moreover, STU has low-income, indigenous students who need support.
