Ontario released its yearly budget report on Tuesday, touting postsecondary funding and STEM projects. But advocacy groups say the funding won’t be enough for the province’s struggling universities.
The provincial government is reducing overall spending on postsecondary institutions by $425 million—from $12.6 to $12.2 billion in the 2024-25 fiscal year. The reduction is due to the federal government’s cap on international student study permits, according to Ontario’s Chamber of Commerce (OCC).
Last November, the government-funded Blue-Ribbon said the Ontario government should allocate at least $2.5 billion in base funding over three years for postsecondary institutions, with at least $1.9 billion of the funding going straight to universities.
The OCC reiterated calls to revise the student permit cap and lobbied the province to implement the Blue-Ribbon ’s recommendations to address the precarious financial state of the province’s universities and colleges.
Ontario blaming their financial woes on the freeze, which has been in place since 2019.
The provincial government also said it would provide postsecondary institutions with $1.3 billion in additional funding in February. University advocacy groups say the funding doesn’t suffice.
“While this investment will provide immediate financial relief, it falls far short of what the sector needs to be financially sustainable,” Steve Orsini, president and CEO of the Council of Ontario Universities (COU), said in a statement on Tuesday.
Ontario’s budget report paints Ontario’s tuition fee freeze as a mechanism to keep costs down for students and parents. Despite this, students in Ontario pay the third-highest tuition in Canada, according to the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) President Nigmendra Narain.
“This chronic underfunding has directly and negatively impacted student experiences because universities don’t have enough resources to provide the world-class education students deserve and need to lead and innovate,” Narain said in an email to The Journal.
“The government must step up and adequately fund Ontario’s universities now that the freeze has been extended.”
The province has focused on capital grants to universities, while per-student funding—which goes toward student services and hiring professors—hasn’t seen a meaningful increase, Narain said.
“Ontario is last in per-student funding in the country,” he said.
Current per-student funding falls seven times short of what Ontario would need to meet Canada’s average over the next five years, according to calculations by the OCUFA.
OCUFA is calling for funding increases of 11.75 per cent every year for the next five years to bring Ontario up to par. The $1.3 billion funding package is a “drop in the bucket,” Narain added.
Ontario’s funding package consists of the Postsecondary Education Sustainability Fund, which will provide around $903 million in financial to institutions over three years. There’s a $15 million Efficiency and ability Fund, which is allocated to conduct third-party reviews of postsecondary institutions. The province allocates $100 million to STEM projects and $65.4 million to research.
In addition to the $1.3 billion fund, the province announced new plans to allocate $6.1 billion of its new Building Ontario Fund to postsecondary projects and student housing on Tuesday. Ontario is allocating $9 million in start-up funding to York University’s new medical school, which will specialize in family medicine.
The province’s overall spending on postsecondary institutions is projected to increase 3.1 per cent between 2024 and 2027—just enough to keep up with the inflation rate, which currently sits at 2.9 per cent.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].