The Bruce Report

There is nothing like a first-class economic crisis to bring out the college of smart guys, extolling the virtues of hard work, big ideas and sober, second thought.

 

So it was in Moncton a couple of weeks ago when luminaries from Atlantic Canada’s business, education and public sectors gathered to ponder the fate of the region in a world gone mad.

 

Of course, a day of brain-busting confabulation isn’t much time to sort out the affairs of a part of Canada that’s been, too often over the past 50 years, its own worst enemy. Still, the dutifully assembled gave it their best shot.

 

Does Atlantic Canada possess the resources and political commitment to remake itself in the image of its fondest aspiration? Or does the average bloke really care?

 

Do universities hold the key to long-term development? Or are they fatally burdened by the silos that keep them apart from the muck and moil of daily life?

 

Is out-migration, particularly among young people, a dart to the heart of the region’s future prosperity. Or is it an opportunity to recalibrate our “brand worthiness” through a small-is-beautiful campaign that targets a knowledge-loving, technology-driven international marketplace?

 

You know, the easy stuff.

 

But, though there were few answers, one point rang like a bell, at least in my own modestly equipped mind: If the region has any chance of outpacing the current crisis, of building a new foundation for economic success, it must pay more than mere lip service to the urgent need for affordable, accessible higher education.

 

Today, legions of university and college kids graduate clutching a sheepskin in one hand and a massive I.O.U. in the other. Over the past decade, student debt (which now averages a whopping $15,000 per person, per year) has deepened – in many instances beyond the point of no return on an investment that society still insists must be made, regardless of the consequences.

 

In fact, the consequences are not only personal (poverty, bankruptcy, despair); they’re also broadly economic, and they cut to the core of what it means to be a truly competitive region in a world where ideas and skills move across borders, rewarding the fleet and nimble and punishing the slow and clumsy.

 

Naturally, the solutions are not easy. Yet, one seems painfully obvious: Eliminate, or radically reduce, tuition rates for undergraduate courses of study in Atlantic Canada.

 

Now, before the howling imprecations from the right side of the political divide commence, allow me to elaborate.

 

First, there are immediate social benefits stemming from any scheme that puts money back into the pockets of young scholars. Those with the wherewithal to study do so more quickly and efficiently than those who are forced to assume onerous, distracting levels of public and private debt. The result is that the former tends to graduate sooner, with degrees more closely linked to their interests and gifts – making them better, more job-ready employees – than the latter. To use the language of economics, tuition relief reduces the incidence of costly externalities (prolonged under-employment, joblessness, and systemic labour shortages in key industries, among others).

 

Second, debt-free graduates are more likely than their sallow-skinned, money-hungry counterparts to seek advanced credits; and they are more likely to seek them in fields of study which promise rewarding, lucrative, permanent work. Moreover, if that work is available in Atlantic Canada, every credible economic development think tank insists that, for the first time in a generation, new cohorts of educated young people will stay, not flee for their economic lives.

 

Predictably, there is the question of who pays. Just as predictably, the answer is: We do. We working men and women, who send our taxes to Ottawa to ensure, among other things, that our children obtain at least the same opportunities we’ve had, must foot the bill through the ministrations of our governments. And nationally, collectively, this will amount to billions of dollars a year. But how cheap that price is – what a true fiscal stimulus it becomes – when measured against the cost of doing nothing.

 

If this global tumult teaches us anything, it is that short-term thinking leads to long-term trauma. Invest, now, in the next generation – in the next college of smart guys – and, one day, we won’t need our biggest brains pondering solutions to problems that, frankly, should never exist.

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