Research & Submissions - Funding
The research was initiated in response to concerns about the effects of the current envelope funding practice on the institutional autonomy of universities and on faculty association negotiations with the university administrations. In addition to a discussion of these issues, the discussion paper provides a background on the history of envelope funding in Ontario, recent developments, and an assessment of the provincial government’s intentions. It concludes with an outline of policy positions that OCUFA could adopt, the issues each would address and some of their respective implications.
Per student funding, student faculty ratios and student interaction with faculty show that inadequate support for post secondary education in Ontario continues to threaten the global competitiveness of Ontario universities and the provincial economy.
Because of larger-than-anticipated enrolment increases, the Liberal Government’s $6.2-billion increase to post-secondary education, announced in 2005, will have a minimal impact on the quality of education offered Ontario students. Ontario falls behind the rest of Canada and American peer institutions in terms of per student funding and student-faculty ratios.
Ontario government funding for students today is far less than it was for their parents. In inflation-adjusted dollars, Ontario contributes only $4,271 per student today, versus $6,568 in the 1970s, a gap of $2,297, or 35 per cent less.
Ontario’s total investment in R&D compares poorly to other industrialized nations. The province’s investment in R&D, as a proportion of GDP, is 14 per cent below the G7 average.
The quality of undergraduate education in Ontario remains at risk despite the government’s five-year, $6.2-billion Reaching Higher plan, which pledged enough funds to hire more professors. There has been no improvement in student-faculty ratios, however, because inflation-adjusted, per-student funding is still well below the 1990s. Faculty hiring has not kept pace with enrolment increases, so in 2003-04 Ontario had a student-faculty ratio of 27 students to each full-time professor, while American peer institutions had a 15 to one ratio. Ontario needs 11,000 more professors by the end of the decade and needs to make a commitment to recruit full-time, tenure-stream faculty.
Ontario Budget 2007 contains no new initiatives for universities that will be sustained through the life of the government’s Reaching Higher plan. As with last year’s Budget, Reaching Higher funding targets were re-announced. A one-time injection of $390 million from federal funding was also announced for post-secondary education (PSE).
The year 2007-08 is crucial for Ontario universities. Reaching Higher announced that 12,000 more graduate spaces would be created by this time than were in place in 2002-03. Undergraduate enrolments are now expected to have increased by over 66,000 over the same period.
The government’s plan to expand graduate education by an additional 14,000 students by 2010, although laudable, has put the quality of graduate education at risk. Ontario universities are not hiring enough faculty to ensure graduate students a quality education. Ontario universities need to hire 2,205 additional faculty to reach 1995-96 graduate student-faculty ratios. The government is not providing enough operating funding, not enough graduate-student financial assistance support, and not enough funding to address overdue repairs and expand space requirements. The report demonstrates that failing to involve faculty in the expansion planning leads to oversights.
As a requirement of Reaching Higher, Ontario universities are obliged to meet certain conditions contained in their multi-year accountability agreements with the government. The interim accountability agreements for 2005-06 provided the first glimpse at the yearly “contract” between the institutions and the government. The interim agreements provided details about the quality Improvement Fund, as well as information on the quality of teaching and learning, educational resources and student supports. In terms of faculty hiring, for example, of the 614 net new hires reported in 2005-06, only 35 per cent were tenure-stream.
Despite the controversy around the efficacy of indicator-driven funding in post-secondary education, the multi-year accountability agreements required as part of the government’s Reaching Higher plan include so-called performance indicators to measure quality changes resulting from the plan’s $6.2 billion in increased funding. While faculty support efforts to enhance quality in the classroom, they caution that the types of measures used will not necessarily improve quality, while increasing the burdens placed on faculty and staff. The report urges the government not to repeat the mistakes of previous governments in Canada and abroad but to balance its desire for accountability with respect for institutional autonomy and academic freedom.
Vol. 7 No. 1 – Despite the ongoing controversy over the validity and value of the annual Maclean’s university rankings, it continues to be the most widely read issue of the magazine, so parents and students must consider the results to be useful. This analysis of the rankings includes 2005 — the last year in which all Ontario universities participated — and reveals troubling trends in areas such as student-faculty ratio, funding, and class size. Of particular interest is the assessment of the increasing number of classes with more than 100 students in the upper years of undergraduate education.