College students slam law school’s special perks
Cash-strapped nursing hopefuls accuse GN of showing favouritism toward law students.
AARON SPITZER
IQALUIT — Nunavut’s much-ballyhooed law school is catching flak a full six months before it even opens.
The Akitsiraq Law School, which hopes to enroll about 15 Inuit in its four-year bachelor of laws program, is being challenged on its plan to provide its future students with what some consider posh perks.
Causing controversy is the school’s decision to offer an approximately $50,000 annual living allowance to each of its enrollees — in addition to paying for their full tuition.
To Nunavut students working hard and pinching pennies in other career-training programs, those benefits seem unfairly rich.
Jeannie Kowcharlie, who is studying to be a nurse at Iqaluit’s Arctic College, said she and her fellow trainees feel the Nunavut government is slighting other professions in favor of future lawyers.
If Premier Paul Okalik was a nurse and not a lawyer, she said, “I’m sure he would be funding us more.”
Originally from Sanikiluaq, Kowcharlie takes classes full time and supports herself and her three children on money from the Financial Assistance for Nunavut Students program.
For most nursing students, FANS provides about $17,000 a year — leaving them far less flush than Nunavut’s soon-to-be legalists.
“It’s very hard. I’m tight on money right now,” Kowcharlie said.
“It’s my dream to become a nurse. But the financial difficulties are beginning to outweigh it.”
Several students left well-paying jobs to join the nursing program, she said. Because of the rigorous schedule of their studies, they have no time for outside work. Many have large families to feed.
Asenath Idlout, a second-year nursing student with four children and a spouse, said she is barely scraping by. She said she’d be ecstatic if she were offered $50,000 a year.
“I’d pinch myself,” she said. “It would lift a whole lot of burden from me.”
Idlout, from Pond Inlet, said her sister was originally with her in the nursing program, but dropped out because she was fed up with living in poverty.
While being careful not to condemn the law school itself, several Nunavut MLAs have also been taking aim at the apparent inequity between that program and other Nunavut career-training efforts.
Speaking before the Nunavut assembly earlier this month, Rebekah Williams, the MLA for the Quttiktuq region, urged Health Minister Ed Picco to ask the federal government and Inuit organizations to sponsor nursing students in the same way they have pledged funds for the law school.
Not all the money for the law school’s living allowance is coming from the GN.
The students at Akitsiraq will also be paid by Justice Canada, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Qikiqtaaluk Corporation and perhaps other Inuit organizations.
Picco said Ottawa has already been approached about money, but has declined to offer help to the nursing students.
According to Andrejs Berzins, the law school’s director, the $50,000 living allowance is not purely a payout to Akitsiraq enrollees.
For around three-and-a-half months a year the students will be working as legal interns with their sponsoring organizations. After they graduate, many may come and work for their sponsors.
“This is an investment that the sponsors are making in the students,” Berzins said.
He said the handsome living allowance is designed to attract and retain the best possible students for what will be a long and grueling program.
Many of Akitsiraq’s possible pupils already hold high-paying jobs, and it’s unrealistic to think they’ll leave those positions if faced with a dramatic pay cut.
“We have to provide a level of financial assistance that is reasonable,” he said.
In the past, many career-training efforts in Nunavut have suffered demoralizing attrition rates. Of the seven students who started Arctic College’s nursing program in 1999, all but two have already dropped out.
Last year’s entering class is faring better, but empty pockets make the going tough.
The Akitsiraq Law School wants to avoid those sorts of statistics by ensuring that students have no financial reason to leave the school.
But while the law school is trying to lure the Arctic’s best and brightest, and is being billed as a training ground for Nunavut’s future leaders, the nursing students at Arctic College wonder if the GN feels it needs lawyers more than nurses.
“They have a shortage of nurses,” Kowcharlie said with a frown. “If nobody’s supporting us, why are we doing this all alone?”
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