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From the President
‘Reaching Higher' Plan Must Reach Higher Still
Editor's note: President Alastair Summerlee invites comments on his column at president@uoguelph.ca.
I have joined with University of Waterloo president David Johnson and Wilfrid Laurier University president Bob Rosehart to write editorials and opinion columns as part of our ongoing advocacy efforts to lobby the provincial government for increased support for higher education. I wish to share with you the following column we wrote that recently appeared in The Record.
One of the key reasons Waterloo Region and Wellington County are such great places to live and do business is the investments in our local post-secondary institutions.
Collectively we produce graduates ready to meet the high demand in many disciplines critical to the health of our social infrastructure, and they feed the economic vitality of this region, making businesses competitive on a global scale. In short, our universities contribute enormously to the health and welfare of our communities. The key to productivity is a skilled, educated workforce.
The post-secondary education system in Ontario has a good record of meeting challenges head-on, most recently in 2003 when we were able to make room for the unprecedented “double cohort” of students graduating from Grade 12 and OAC at the same time. The answer to that particular challenge was increased funding that allowed universities to build the infrastructure required to take on the wave of students while ensuring they would receive a high-quality education.
It was believed that the double cohort was an isolated incident, a consequence of reform to the secondary education system, and that things would return to normal. But we now face a new challenge, that of continued increases in enrolment at Ontario universities, of which the double cohort was only the beginning. The year 2007 has been another period of extraordinary growth in university applications.
By last month, 79,568 secondary students had applied for first-year admission, an increase of more than five per cent or 3,908 students over 2006. Usually exceeding one's expectations is cause for celebration, but this increase in demand is both good and bad.
It's good that there's such a demand for university education as graduates contribute immensely to Ontario's social and economic development. Accessibility of post-secondary education is a public good, and we were happy to partner with the provincial government to ensure there was a place for every student who wanted one. But it is also problematic because Ontario's universities are stretched to the limit, and we are struggling to provide the same high-quality education we always have.
The Ontario government's “Reaching Higher” plan, introduced in 2005, improved financial support and allocated $2.8 billion over five years in new funding. That sounds like a substantial investment, and it is. But it hasn't kept up with the roaring demand for university education. Enrolments at Ontario's universities this year were 14,000 students over the Reaching Higher projections.
Minister of Colleges, Training and Universities Chris Bentley has recently gone on the public record as stating that every student attending Ontario universities is fully funded. But that funding applies only to the number of students falling within the ministry's own approved projections. Where does this leave the 14,000 other students who have entered Ontario's university system?
Because enrolment has increased so dramatically, real funding per student is declining. The result is a shortfall of $100 million across the system in 2006/07. Rather than enjoy the full benefit of provincial core funding, we are receiving in the range of only 84 cents on the dollar in 2007, and in the 2007/2008 academic year, we will be at 65 cents. By 2009/10, that shortfall will have grown to $300 million.
Without new funding for these new students, our ability to improve the quality of the student learning experience will be seriously affected. The Reaching Higher plan simply did not reach high enough and does not adequately address the significant enrolment increases of recent years.
To make matters worse, the ministry has suggested that schools that exceed their enrolment targets can shore up per-student funding by dipping into the money the government has allotted to each institution for quality improvements. Redirecting these funds is not an option for us because Ontario universities need every penny of the quality improvement funds if we are to even maintain our current levels of quality.
Funding allocated for graduate enrolment expansion, which itself is desperately needed as the students of the double cohort enter graduate school, and for quality improvement must not be diverted to other purposes. Such improvements will be undermined without additional funding to accommodate the additional demand placed on Ontario's universities.
We believe universities are being unfairly penalized for promoting greater accessibility of post-secondary education. It is essential for the provincial government to honour its commitment to fully fund all Ontario university students by ensuring that the Reaching Higher plan effectively provides for the increased demand.
At the same time, we call on the federal government to restore fairness to its equalization platform and address the fiscal imbalance in Ontario that sees our province receive $86 less per capita than other jurisdictions. The result is a shortfall this year of about $1.1 billion that Ontario could invest in colleges and universities, health care and social services.
Ontario's universities have made an incalculable contribution to the province's — and the country's — economic and social successes by providing every willing and able student with a high-quality education. In return, our governments have a responsibility to ensure that Ontario's universities don't become victims of their own success and aren't left without the means to ensure a quality education for the increasing number of students who deserve access to our institutions. Accessibility and quality are two sides of the same coin, and that coin resides in the pockets of those at Queen's Park and on Parliament Hill.