A plaque in the atrium of the Arts and Administration building on MUN’s St. John’s campus reminds us that our university was created as a living tribute to the enormous sacrifices made by the people of Newfoundland and Labrador on the battlefields of Europe: “In the freedom of learning their cause and sacrifice might not be forgotten.”
This legacy is a moving testament to the desire of the people of this province to build something of beauty and meaning that helps us all live better together now and in the future of this place.
Freedom to learn is something unfettered and unrestricted. It is a freedom codified into sections 3(3)(a) and 3(3)(c) of the legislation covering Memorial University: the university shall, “give instructions and training in all branches of knowledge and learning” and “provide facilities for the prosecution of original research in every branch of knowledge and learning and to conduct and carry on that research work.”
But, the freedom to learn that defines Memorial University has been subject to salvo after salvo in a decade of funding cuts.
Since 2014, every provincial government has reduced transfers to Memorial while professing continued support for the University.
As of 2025, MUN’s operating grant was down 47 percent in inflation adjusted dollars from its level of funding in 2014. No institution, no matter how ‘nimble’, can be what it was before almost half of its budget was removed.
Cuts to the university’s operating budget continue despite two separate studies showing the institution’s economic contribution to be between $1-2 billion.
That contribution means that for every dollar of public money put into the university $2-4 dollars come out into the broader economy. There is not an investor in the world who wouldn’t jump at a chance to double or quadruple their money.
Yet, when it comes to the public university of this province governments typically treat it only as a cost. Members of our provincial government repeatedly describe Memorial University students as “the most heavily subsidized” in the country while insisting the university get its “fiscal house in order.”
But what do statements like these even mean?
Memorial University is a public university. Public infrastructure and services are, by definition, supported by public money.
Shall we build a public drinking water system and then complain that the water coming out of the tap is too wet?
Transfers of public money to private industry—that’s a subsidy. Meanwhile, it’s academic staff members and students who bear the fallout of unrelenting budget cuts in the form of deteriorating working and learning conditions.
Those cuts—even in the face of clear evidence of the economic benefits of the university—dismantle the very infrastructure necessary to fulfill the core mission of the university.
Budgets are choices.
The decade of cuts to MUN is a shameful choice to abdicate the responsibility to honour the memory of sacrifice and the freedom to learn that our university is founded on.
Previous governments have made that choice, but this one doesn’t have to. Today’s government can chart its own course and help restore the foundations on which Memorial University is built.
Josh Lepawsky, Professor, Department of Geography, Memorial University
