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The Ontario provincial government has its hands in a lot of cakes and not all of them are to its liking. If you want to build a highway, demolish a bike path or a few billion dollars to help build a battery factory, Premier Doug Ford is your guy. If you want a financially sustainable university system that can meet future student demand, this isn’t really the case.

In a new reportThe Council of Ontario Universities (COU) makes a compelling and compelling argument for greater financial support, either through higher tuition fees, larger government grants, or both. The EOC report says that by 2030, without greater provincial funding, 100,000 qualified potential students will not be able to find places at Ontario universities. This is a situation that should irritate parents and motivate politicians.

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Ontario’s universities are underfunded and in serious financial difficulty. This is not really a contestable conclusion. Ontario funding per student ranks last in the country; that’s about half the per-student average for the rest of the country.

This is 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 fees by 10% in 2019 and has kept it frozen ever since.

In addition to these fundamental shortcomings, Ontario universities face a trio of new problems. For years, universities circumvented provincial parsimony by accepting ever-increasing numbers of foreign students, who paid exorbitant tuition fees. THE the federal government has rightly reduced these numbers. According to the EOC, this will result in a billion-dollar revenue loss in the first two years alone.

Then there is the effect of the failure of the provincial government Bill 124 which attempted to restrict public sector salaries. The plan was deemed unconstitutional and universities had to grant raises to compensate for the gains denied to their employees. Based on financial reports from just over half of the province’s universities to date, this repair cost $335 million this year and will result in ongoing costs of $266 million per year, according to the EOC.

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Finally, there is 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 granted universities and colleges $1.3 billion in specific, time-limited funding this will help alleviate some of these pressures over the next three years, but only modestly. Of that money, $903 million is for operating costs and universities will likely receive three-quarters of that. The EOC says the new provincial funds represent about a third of the increase the government recommended a year ago. own panel of experts on financing post-secondary education.

The COU has been strategically smart in focusing on the growing gap between available university places and student demand. It’s easier to understand than the complexity of college finances.

The EOC took its own data on the increase in demand in the 18-24 age bracket and combined it with the government’s population estimates to predict the gap of 100,000 students. This is the kind of work one might expect from the government itself, but identifying the problem would raise pesky questions about the solution and it would be easier to pretend everything is fine.

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It’s a little-known fact, but the number of students admitted to Ontario universities is governed not by graduate student demand, but by the government’s willingness to spend. This is a rationing system similar to that which limits health care in Ontario. The overall number of students has not changed significantly since 2016, despite a rapidly growing population.

The provincial government sets an admissions target for each university. There is some flexibility, but if the university accepts fewer students than the lower target number, its government support may be reduced. If a university exceeds the upper number in the target range, it receives no funding for these additional students. There are currently approximately 28,000 unsupported students at Ontario universities.

One could reasonably debate how the costs of college should be split between students and government, but it is not realistic to freeze tuition fees, freeze scholarships per student, and also freeze the number of students.

David Orsini, president and CEO of the university council, says the universities and the Ford government are in talks for a new five-year agreement and he is cautiously optimistic that a solution can be found.

You really have to. The Ford government certainly realizes that a well-functioning university sector supports its economic expansion goals. Ford already said it he wants to put Ontario’s children first when it comes to medical schools, but an undersized university system will deprive many other young people in Ontario of the chance to access the education they need.

National Post

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