It has begun or On the road or a more 'rational' university system in Nova Scotia

Since the O'Neill Report on post-secondary education in Nova Scotia was released a few months ago talk of university mergers has been in the air. Recent university budget constraints and tuition increases have provided the merger fire with even more fuel.

It seems that we may have finally reached a tipping point. CBC is now reporting that Dal and the Nova Scotia Agricultural College are set to begin merger talks.

I presume the big question is if this set of talks will lead to any additional merger talks. Based on what I have heard on the subject MSVU seems like a prime merger candidate, as does NSCAD. I keep wondering if we can really justify the continued independence of SMU and Dal.

One prof I spoke to about this a few months ago thought that mergers were unlikely to happen, at least in Halifax, on a large scale because of the religious affiliations of the schools that would be involved. Could a protestant school really absorb a catholic school like SMU without causing a public backlash? While we will have to wait to see if such arguments are brought forward, I really have a hard time imagining that this would ever be much of an issue in this secular age, particularly when most of the students attending these schools probably can't identify the religious groups with which the school was originally associated. Furthermore, are any of these religious groups really interested in putting up a fight, particularly if winning means permanent budget gridlock for the institution and lower quality education?

Anyway, I suspect these merger talks are a sign of things to come for post-secondary education in Nova Scotia and given the size of the industry here such talks will be of some importance to the province as a whole. I know I will definitely be paying attention as this plays out.