The Ontario government this week took a welcome and long overdue step towards paying for the kind of post-secondary system the province needs to drive economic growth.
It will
spend $750 million over five years to cover the cost of 20,500 student places
in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). People with those skills are essential in a tech-driven world. It makes sense to train as many as possible.
However, the news isn’t quite as good as it would first appear. This is not a major expansion of STEM training. Rather, it is largely the Doug Ford government belatedly providing the money for something universities, and to some extent colleges, are already doing.
Ontario’s rigid and out-of-date university funding formula hampers universities’ ability to respond to economic demand by limiting the number of students they can take. Universities have been able to get around this to some degree because of significant numbers of foreign students, who pay higher tuition fees. Those numbers will be down next fall because of
federal government caps on foreign student permits.
The provincial government is stepping up with permanent base funding to make sure STEM training is not affected, but that’s not all it is doing.
Ontario’s post-secondary funding hasn’t had a fundamental review since 2016, but the Ford government is about to begin one. It’s about time. Ontario’s government operating grants per university student are
and about $4,000 less than the national average.
In the interim, the Council of Ontario Universities (COU) is
asking for help in this year’s spring budget
. Last year, the provincial Ford government announced $1.3 billion over three years to help schools stay afloat. The problem is that the money is temporary, as if the sector’s financial problems are some kind of blip, not a systemic shortfall.
COU would like the sustainability amounts to be made permanent and doubled. It’s not an unreasonable request, but it will be surprising if it meets a positive reception.
Still, it’s encouraging to see the post-secondary sector and the provincial government moving towards a point of convergence. The language of this week’s STEM announcement was all about “protecting workers and jobs by investing in post-secondary education.” The universities’ pitch for money also emphasizes their economic contribution, while reminding the government that the university system isn’t big enough to meet future needs. COU estimates that an additional 100,000 spaces will be required by 2030 to meet the needs of Ontario domestic students.
The financial implications of that are significant. Not including the latest money, Ontario spends $5 billion a year to educate about 920,000 post-secondary students now.
This is not a problem the Ford government is willing to throw money at without a clear expectation of results, nor should it.
Ontario’s colleges and universities are in the middle of a shakeup driven in part by the reduction in foreign students. Colleges in particular had drifted far from their core mandate of training people for the Ontario economy and some of them now face program cancellations, closure of satellite campuses, and layoffs.
Universities didn’t rely on foreign students to the extent that colleges did, but the loss of those students has hurt them too, and made worse the underlying pressures from low provincial funding.
The solution lies in universities adopting a clearer focus on what the Ontario government wants and what the province’s economy needs.
Ontario universities seem willing to do that, up to a point, but change won’t be easy. For decades, universities have defended the privilege of teaching whatever they want; in effect, demanding that the public subsidize learning that does little to boost the province’s economy.
That’s not a realistic approach given the Ford government’s focus on economic growth and the
control it has over university budgets
. Government operating grants and research contracts amount to 40 per cent of university funding. Tuition provides 44 per cent, but the government controls tuition levels.
Universities have long said that a degree in anything has value, the old learning-to-learn argument. No doubt it has some, but learning something useful has more value still. That needs to be the focus of a renewed, financially stable post-secondary system.
University’s offerings need to be driven less by the preferences of teenaged first-year students and more by economic requirements. The government has responsibilities, too. It has made STEM a priority, but it needs to do more to meet the need for teachers and nurses, too. Too many qualified applicants are being turned away in a province that requires their skills.
Ontario’s universities are pillars of the provincial economy, and the more they do to enhance that role, the easier it will be to convince the public and the government to support the substantial extra money they require.
National Post
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