I grew up in rural Nova Scotia and have lived most of my life in this province. Throughout this time, the tale of Nova Scotia’s economic woes has always been front and center. I was in middle school when the ground fishery collapsed. Many of my generation have left for better jobs and opportunities – this depopulation has created a demographic time bomb, which the recent wave of immigration has only slightly reversed. Nova Scotia has the second lowest per capita GDP in Canada, and we pay some of the highest taxes. We need economic growth. Our current government recognizes this and is pinning our hopes on developing various, sometimes questionable, natural resource sectors; uranium mining, oil and gas exploration, offshore wind. Yet at the same time they are intentionally harming one of the most valuable contributors to our economy – higher education.

We seldom think of it, but higher education is the 2nd largest export industry in Nova Scotia, only behind fishing, and valued at $1.5 billion annually. Our largest, Dalhousie University, alone employs more people in this province than Irving Shipyard, NS Power, or Michelin. Every year our universities bring 25,000 talented, motivated young people to this province, where they collectively spend nearly $400 million in local businesses every year. Many will stay here after they graduate, and will become health care workers, start businesses, and become leaders.

An affordable, well-funded higher education system is also a path to prosperity for low income Nova Scotians. Every level of higher education beyond high school is a $10,000-$15,000 increase in both median and average incomes. Nova Scotia makes back its investment in a four year bachelor’s degree in 7 years from increased income tax alone. Unfortunately, university government funding per student in real dollars has been declining and is not keeping up with inflation. Nova Scotia now invests less per student than the other Atlantic provinces.

Every year Nova Scotia universities attract $300 million dollars in research funds from outside the province. The majority of this pays salaries to Nova Scotians and flows to local businesses to support our research endeavours. This research drives discoveries which allow us to compete on the world stage.

Our government’s desire to exercise greater control over its universities – the passage of Bill 12, mandatory program reviews that must demonstrate workplace need, and withholding funds until performance metrics are met – will harm our university’s competitiveness. An overreliance on government prioritized applied research, will hurt researchers ability to make truly transformative, paradigm shifting discoveries. Former UofT professor Geoffrey Hinton, “The Grandfather of AI,” whose research in the 1980s, long before there was commercial interest, set the stage for the AI revolution we are now experiencing, has said:

“In particular, the main funding council for this type of research, called NSERC, uses money for basic curiosity-driven research, and all of these advances in neural networks came out of basic curiosity-driven research — not out of throwing money at applied.”

Likewise, tailoring university degree programs to meet today’s workplace needs is a sure way to ensure Nova Scotia is always a step behind when adapting to the demands of tomorrow. Yes, universities have some professional schools, but they are not meant to only train people to do a specific job. A university’s role is to teach people to think critically, so they are prepared for and can adapt to the world around them. Universities don’t train people to fill a workplace need; we train people to create that need. Why is Silicon Valley in California? It is not because of the nice climate; it is most certainly to do with Stanford and the high concentration of top universities in the Bay Area. When you put a lot of smart, motivated people in the same place good things happen. That is what universities bring. This is something we actually have in Nova Scotia.

Too often I hear comments that Nova Scotia has too many universities, but this feeling is misplaced. We need to stop seeing our cluster of universities as an economic liability, and start seeing them for what they are, valuable assets and an investment in our future that more than pays for itself both in the short and long term.

Dr. Christopher Algar, Associate Professor, Dept. of Oceanography, Dalhousie University