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.
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.
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.
Performance indicators periodically emerge as a topic of discussion in Ontario. This is no surprise, as since the 1980s, the use of performance indicators in post-secondary education has multiplied across OECD nations. The United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand have been using performance indicators to monitor higher education targets for years. Countries in the Mediterranean as well as Central and Eastern Europe are beginning to establish performance indicators. Many American states are well into performance monitoring, though some are ratcheting down efforts after hitting glitches in the process. This paper investigates and considers the merits of various systems and measures related to performance indicators.
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.
Vol. 6 No. 1 – This report presents three scenarios for Ontario universities in terms of the student-faculty ratio. The first scenario is the status quo, where the 2005 ratio of 24 students for every faculty member puts Ontario universities at the bottom of the list when compared to Canadian and American peers. The second and middle-of-the-road scenario harkens back to the 18:1 ratio of 10 years ago. The third scenario, where Ontario becomes the North American leader in terms of quality, envisions a student-faculty ratio of 15:1. This scenario would mean that Ontario would have to hire an additional 11,000 faculty by 2010. OCUFA urges the Ontario government to immediately implement a faculty recruitment and retainment strategy or risk an even greater quality gap in future years.
Vol. 5 No.4 – Recent studies into Ontario’s economic future suggest setting ambitious targets for greater achievement in our university sector, a proposal requiring significantly increased public funding. This paper looks at what results could be accomplished by meeting such targets. It examines the projected cost of a series of proposed improvements and suggests that Ontario government funding should rise at least to the national average. Great improvements could be achieved by making Ontario universities the best-funded in Canada, and even settling for national-average funding would stop deterioration and allow some improvements. Substantially increased public support would be amply repaid in benefits to the province and to Ontarians.
This paper reviews the Harris/Eves governments’ funding cuts to the province’s universities, whose negative impact is reflected in the Maclean’s rankings of Canadian universities. Universities were among the hardest hit of Ontario’s transfer-payment agencies during the Conservative budget cuts, and funding increases in the later years of the Conservative government only partially restored lost funding. The consequences of these cuts on universities were striking in areas such as tuition, operating funding, enrolment, and student-faculty ratios. Universities were also affected substantially by the government’s decision to eliminate Grade 13 from secondary schools, creating the “double cohort.”
