Economic eviction threatens New Brunswick’s youth

In New Brunswick, youth are told that a post-secondary degree leads to good jobs and financial security. Yet, an unreleased document provided to university professors from the Susan Holt government suggests a reversal of that promise. Proposed cuts of up to $50 million do more than just weaken our colleges and universities; they represent a retreat from the promise of a better future for our youth during a time of massive economic stress.

From merging St. Thomas University with University of New Brunswick to privatizing Mount Allison University and closing New Brunswick Community College campuses, these actions threaten New Brunswick’s educational ecosystem.

The Holt government is framing a 10 per cent cut to operating grants as a “necessary sacrifice” to fix a deficit, but the numbers simply don’t justify the damage. Even if we shut down every university in the province tomorrow, it would not solve this fiscal gap. This raises a much more urgent question: How did New Brunswick’s finances reach this breaking point, and why are students being asked to pay for a crisis they didn’t create?

Treating St. Thomas University as another budget item ignores its value. As New Brunswick’s only university dedicated solely to the liberal arts, St. Thomas University is a training ground for the social workers, teachers, and policy makers who comprise the backbone of New Brunswick’s civil society.

In an era shaped by artificial intelligence and automation, the skills developed at St. Thomas University are essential for workforce resilience.

For decades, Mount Allison has been ranked as Canada’s top undergraduate university. Privatizing Mount Allison would inevitably offload the cost of education directly onto students through tuition.

This isn’t just a price hike; it’s the creation of a two-tiered system. Beyond the classroom, privatization would dismantle the economic fabric of the Tantramar region. Mount Allison serves as a foundational partner to the Tantramar region, acting as a gathering point for young people who become the workers, customers, volunteers, and neighbors that sustain rural New Brunswick.

Scaling back investment in our colleges is a direct strike against New Brunswick’s economic stability. Our labour outlook shows a desperate need for more than 23,000 healthcare workers and 21,000 tradespeople. New Brunswick Community College plays a key role in producing the licensed practical nurses, welders, and mechanics essential for our province. By closing regional campuses, the government isn’t just cutting the budget. It’s staging an “economic eviction” of local youth at a time when New Brunswick should focus on retaining talent.

These institutions are not just schools; they are foundational to the long-term sustainability of the Atlantic region.

New Brunswick is also seeing a persistent “brain drain,” where those who leave the province earn more (up to $7,000 more in median annual earnings) than those who stay. The strongest argument against closing campuses or merging institutions is graduate retention. Data shows that 87 per cent of university graduates and 92 per cent of college graduates born in New Brunswick stay in the province. This is crucial as New Brunswick faces a demographic crossroads.

With 105,000 workers set to retire over the next decade, New Brunswick is bracing for a generational exodus. These aren’t just empty roles to be filled, they are the anchors of our communities. To fill this gap, we rely on a pipeline of local graduates who will become our next generation of taxpayers, homeowners, and parents. By disinvesting in local training, the government isn’t just balancing a budget—it is ensuring that as 105,000 workers exit the workforce, there will be no one left to fill the void.

As a small province, we can’t trade long-term stability for short-term budget cuts. Every graduate lost to another province is a missed opportunity to fill the 136,300 job openings forecasted through 2034. If we make education less accessible, we widen the labour gap and stall our province’s growth.

Higher education should be the bridge to our future prosperity, not a victim of our current debts. If the government treats our classrooms as nothing more than numbers on a spreadsheet, they are trading away New Brunswick’s future.

The province is defaulting on its own growth strategy. We cannot rely on a skilled workforce to solve our labour shortages while simultaneously dismantling the institutions that produce them. If the investment stops here, the future of New Brunswick stops with it.

As a lifelong New Brunswicker, a former student of all three of the province’s English-speaking universities, and a current UNB Master’s researcher, I see a dangerous disconnect between these institutional cuts and the actual needs of our graduates. My research explores how graduates perceive this “value gap”—the disconnection between their massive investments in time and tuition and the precarious labour market they enter. Early findings show that New Brunswick is struggling to turn university degrees into stable, long-term careers.

Contact your MLA. Remind them that higher education is not a line item to be cut, but a promise to be kept.

As the March 17 budget approaches, the Holt Liberals have a final opportunity to honour their commitment to New Brunswick’s youth. Having been elected on a platform centered on student success, the government must now demonstrate that its mandate for education is more than just a campaign talking point.

Isabella Matchett is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick.