Research & Submissions - Tuition
This OCUFA study presents the results of a decade of fiscally motivated tuition increases and the lack of a coherent tuition fee policy in Ontario. The report cautions against a narrow framing of tuition policy, warning that embracing past practices of either annual incremental fee increases or radical expansion of fee deregulation will have a negative impact on access. The report laments in particular the situation of middle- and lower-income families, who are struggling after a decade of rising tuition fees.
Vol.5 No.2 – Increased user fees and other charges imposed under Conservative premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves outweighed the benefits of income-tax cuts for many Ontario families. This paper examines the mathematics of increased user fees and other charges now levied by government, school boards, universities, and other institutions and presents their net effect on hypothetical Ontario households. This paper suggests that the Liberal government should look to other sources of revenue. The report also demonstrates that increased public support for Ontario universities would yield significant returns in the overall prosperity of the province.
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.”