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The Ontario provincial government has its fingers in many pies and not all of them are to its taste. If you want a highway built, a bike lane torn up or a few billion bucks to help build a battery plant, Premier Doug Ford’s your man. If you want a financially sustainable university system with the capacity to meet future student demand, not so much.
In a new report, the Council of Ontario Universities (COU) makes a cogent and compelling argument for better financial support, either through higher tuition, larger government grants or both. The COU report says that by 2030, without greater provincial funding, 100,000 qualified prospective students won’t be able to find a spot in Ontario universities. That’s a situation that should anger parents and motivate politicians.
Ontario’s universities are underfunded and in serious financial trouble. It’s not really a disputable conclusion. Ontario funding per student is dead last in the country; it’s about half the per-student average of the rest of the country.
That’s what happens when successive provincial governments fail to increase per-student funding for 15 years. To make the situation worse, the Ford government cut tuition by 10 per cent in 2019 and has kept it frozen since.
On top of these fundamental shortfalls, Ontario universities face a trifecta of new troubles. For years, universities papered over provincial parsimony by accepting ever-increasing numbers of foreign students, who paid exorbitant tuition. The federal government has quite rightly pared those numbers back. COU says that will mean a loss of $1 billion in revenue in the first two years alone.
Then there is the effect of the provincial government’s failed Bill 124 which tried to restrain public sector wages. The plan was found unconstitutional and universities have to give raises to make up for gains their employees were denied. Based on the financial reporting of just over half of the province’s universities to date, that make-good has cost $335 million this year and will have continuing costs of $266 million a year, COU says.
Finally, there’s post-pandemic inflation. Its effects are undeniable, but with per-student funding and tuition freezes, universities have had to deal with it largely on their own.
Earlier this year, Ontario gave universities and colleges $1.3 billion in specific and time-limited funding that will help offset some of these pressures over the next three years, but only modestly. Of that money, $903 million is for operating costs and universities are likely to get up to three-quarters of it. COU says the new provincial money amounts to about one-third of the increase recommended a year ago by the government’s own expert panel on post-secondary funding.
COU has been strategically smart to focus on the increasing gap between available university places and student demand. It’s easier to understand than the complexity of university finances.
COU has taken its own data about increasing demand in the 18 to 24 age group and combined it with government population estimates to predict the 100,000-student gap. It’s the kind of work that one would expect government itself to do, but identifying the problem would lead to pesky questions about the solution and it’s easier to pretend everything is fine.
It’s a little-noted fact, but the number of students admitted to Ontario universities is governed not by demand from academically qualified students, but by the government’s willingness to spend. It’s a rationing system much like the one that limits Ontario health care. The overall student number hasn’t changed meaningfully since 2016, despite a rapidly growing population.
The provincial government sets an admission target for each university. There is some flexibility, but if the university takes fewer students than the bottom number in the target, its government support can be cut. If a university exceeds the top number in the target range it receives no grants for those additional students. There are about 28,000 such unsupported students in Ontario universities now.
One might reasonably debate how the costs of university should be divided between students and government, but it’s not realistic to freeze tuition, freeze per-student grants and freeze the number of students as well.
Steve Orsini, president and CEO of the university council, says the universities and the Ford government are in talks for a new five-year deal and he’s cautiously optimistic that a resolution will be found.
It really has to be. The Ford government surely realizes that a well-functioning university sector supports its economic expansion goals. Ford has already said that he wants to put Ontario kids first when it comes to medical schools, but an undersized university system will deny a lot of other Ontario kids a chance at the education they need.
National Post
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