UNB Professors Speak on the Trend of Defunding Universities

Cover Photo Credit: Mason Tozer.

Over reading week, The Brunswickan consulted with UNB Sociology Professor Dr. Nathan Kalman-Lamb and History Professor Dr. Angela Tozer to discuss the proposed budget cuts to New Brunswick universities. These proposed cuts represent a political trend in which governments scapegoat universities in times of economic downturn and austerity. In February 2026, Premier Susan Holt proposed a $35–50 million cut to funding for post-secondary schools in New Brunswick. Drs. Kalman-Lamb and Tozer discuss why this should be cause for concern for students and nonstudents alike. 

Karkera: In the wider context of North America, since universities have been under attack for around the last two years, what do you think makes universities a convenient scapegoat? Do you feel like these are coordinated decisions, or do you think they’re independently made?

Kalman-Lamb: The first thing I would start by saying is that we would be completely remiss if we did not understand this to be much longer than a two-year process.

I think we have to understand the neoliberal period first [that] started in 1980. This is when we had the Washington Consensus, Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney, etc. This is an almost 50-year period I’m describing. Over this period, regardless of which political party has been in power in the Anglophone countries of the Global North, what we have seen is a consistent process that has been defined by nothing more than austerity. [Before that,] Canada, the United States, and the UK were considered to be among the crown jewels of the world’s higher education—because they were built through public subsidies.

What you are rightly pointing to is a kind of moral panic that has really picked up in the last two years.

There’s a different tenor to it, unquestionably. I think it defines itself in this language of anti-woke, which is to say the claim is being made in a culture war sense that universities are sites of cultural Marxism and gender ideology and all of these ridiculous buzzwords that are mobilized by an insurgent fascist right wing to suggest that universities are doing frivolous work.

We have a kind of traditional patriarchal white nationalist society that fascist parties in Canada, the UK, and of course the United States, are defending. The university is seen as antithetical to their goals because we offer critiques of capitalism, racism, and white supremacy. 

These problems become a nasty cocktail for universities because what we have is essentially simultaneously austerity, neoliberal politics, and a fascist culture war against the kind of work that’s occurring in the universities. So yes, universities have come into the crosshairs of essentially all political parties. This is where we see the sort of liberal supposed-centre is almost using that fascist critique as cover for their own cuts. 

Tozer: I would frame [the scapegoating of universities] in terms of a neoliberal reordering of universities that accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis, and not so much an economic backlash. In the neoliberal framework, a university is framed as a business, so certain types of “products” become prioritized for the students who are understood as market actors or consumers of a university’s “product.” Knowledge for the sake of knowledge becomes deprioritized. Certain programs, such as humanities programs that centre learning for the sake of learning and do not exist for the sake of making a profit become targeted for cuts. Humanities programs also teach students to think critically, and critical thinking about, for example, the violence behind human and environmental exploitation within our current capitalist economic model, is detrimental to the functioning of such a system that relies on hiding its more violent aspects. 

It is easy to narrate the humanities as “wasteful” in this neoliberal context, when value means making a profit.

If the purpose of a human life is to work and produce a profit for the business that they work for, then reading Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, or Shakespeare becomes a frivolous pastime.

Karkera: How would it look for already underfunded departments in this University (in Arts specifically) if we were to face another budget cut? 

Tozer: In neoliberal logic “downsizing” and “merging” become the key ways to “promote efficiency.” So what I think might happen based on trends is departments might disappear or merge with others and you will lose discipline specificity. While interdisciplinary teaching and learning is a great goal in the humanities, what might happen is individual departments wouldn’t have the same opportunity to hire diverse professors in their disciplines. 

Even worse than this, I think, is the disadvantage to the students. I personally had to drop out of high school in the late 1990s/early 2000s to work … I had the opportunity to enroll in an “Academic Bridging program” at the University of Toronto in 2005 (the key to this date is that it was pre-2008 crisis). I excelled academically, and worked throughout my undergrad. I was able to finance this because of the Ontario Student Loans Program (OSAP) and national funding that was available, which meant that I could graduate with a manageable debt load. As I was living in downtown Toronto in an approximately $650/month apartment (which was expensive to me at the time, but I could afford it) I could walk to campus (no transportation costs), and work at restaurants to make above minimum wage tip money. I would not be able to do this in 2026. 

Funding opportunities are disappearing, housing costs are very high compared to wages, and access to jobs is much lower. Me not being able to attend university wouldn’t be a reflection of my academic ability but of my financial circumstances. It breaks my heart to think of the students who could excel like I did who will never get the chance with budget cuts, and specifically in Ontario, the changes to OSAP funding.

Karkera: How do you respond to the argument that universities are expensive luxuries that taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize during hard times?

Kalman-Lamb: The way I view it is, we’re living within a capitalist society that has a capitalist state, right? And that means that the capitalist state is trying to serve the interests of capital and corporations. They’re not actually trying to serve the interests of the population or the public, even though a public entity serving the public good [is] the myth of liberal democratic societies. 

In reality, we have a system where tax revenue is generated from the citizenry generally. And we think that that money is supposed to be redistributed through the state to things like healthcare and education.

But the capitalist state is only too happy if they can redistribute those funds to the private sector. That’s theft.

That’s really a theft from the people of a given society because it’s their money after all, it’s their taxes that they’re paying to the private sector which is going into the hands of millionaires and billionaires. So I think the whole discussion we tend to have in the public—the question of a budget, for instance, and you know, a financial crisis and so forth—it’s all a form of misdirection away from what’s really going on.

Now, as public funding to universities diminishes, that is a phenomenon we have seen in Canada over my lifetime, and that puts universities in crisis. And so, one of the approaches is to raise tuition, and tuition fees in Canada have approximately doubled [over the last 20-25 years].

Now we know that the other crucial piece to this story has been—and you know this all too well—the recruitment of international students. That’s been a huge part of how Canadian universities specifically have tried to fill the gap from public funding. I have viewed that in terms of exploitation because I think that international students are invited to pay extremely high fees and they’re in a kind of coercive situation because of global migration patterns, the ways in which the Global North has exploited the Global South and put pressure on people to migrate because of imperialism. 

However, the Canadian government has tightened immigration restrictions on university students, basically turning off the tap when it comes to international students coming and filling the gap of higher education funding, and that has produced the current crisis in the political economy of higher education in Canada.

New Brunswick has relied less on international students—we continue to be supported principally by our provincial students—and that’s why this particular moment is a bit of a shock to us. We are seeing subsidies to the Irvings from the government, even as that exact same amount of money is ostensibly going to be taken from our higher education sector, and to me that’s a form of disaster capitalism.

It’s a transfer of wealth from the public and the people of New Brunswick to the private coffers of the Irving Corporation, and to me that’s indefensible.

Karkera: What do you think it would take for the public narrative around higher education to shift from this period? I have two sub-questions: who do you think should be leading that shift, and how?

Kalman-Lamb: We actually have university administrations, unions, every institution, and students all on the same side of this story. I think at minimum the only way of responding to the political crises of our time is a form of socialism.

If the problem is capitalism or racial capitalism as a system, and neoliberalism as a function of that, the solution is actually countering capital by bolstering the interests of people more broadly in an anti-capitalist sense. So if you can make the cost of living, housing, the cost of food, and other essentials more affordable—and there are plenty of ways the state can intervene to do that—you’re gonna dial down the tension in society, because that tension comes from people’s desperation.

I think the Green Party in New Brunswick has made some noises in that vein, and they’ve done a good job of pushing back against these cuts. Look, I mean, it’s pretty simple: if you actually heavily taxed corporations like the Irvings in New Brunswick, you would generate the tax base that was required to then support all of these public sectors that are in crisis.

Tozer: I think we need to keep going, keep creating, keep supporting students as faculty to show that they are not alone and that we understand these changes deeply impact them especially.

What would a future look like where only elites could send their children to universities? Well, we know what that would look like because it was that way in the past. 

Let’s look to good examples of functioning democratic societies that prioritize knowledge for the sake of knowledge and even in some cases provide free post secondary education. We need to think deeply about sustainable futures, which includes equal access to higher education and freedom to pursue subjects of study to advance human knowledge that might never produce a profit.

Karkera: Do you have any takeaway messages for the readers?

Kalman-Lamb: We have to pull together and demonstrate solidarity. It’s the only alternative available to us. I would encourage students to write to their member of the legislature in New Brunswick and tell them that they disapprove of these proposed changes. That really matters because you are voters—the university students comprise a pretty significant portion of the population of Fredericton—and if Fredericton university students, en masse, move away from the Liberal Party, it’s a huge crisis for them politically.

There’s a rally planned on March 12th [now postponed to March 17th], and I would encourage any students who can to attend. I’ll be attending that rally. I think that it’s important for all members of the university community, not just UNB and STU, to visibly demonstrate that we don’t accept the legitimacy of these proposed cuts.

If we make it hurt them politically, that’s how we have some power and leverage in this situation.

*Please note that the protest has been postponed until March 17th. Check @ studentsagainstcutnb on Instagram for updates. We currently assume the rest of the details on the below poster will continue as planned.

Fredericton Member of Parliament (MP): david.myles@parl.gc.ca

Saint John- Kennebecasis MP: wayne.long@parl.gc.ca 

Moncton-Dieppe MP: ginette.petitpastaylor@parl.gc.ca

Beauséjour (Sackville) MP: dominic.leblanc@parl.gc.ca