Universities want the provincial government to lift a cap on domestic enrolment and provide funding for the additional students, warning that without changes some 100,000 spots for Ontario teens over the next six years are at risk.
In a report to be released Friday, obtained by the Star, the province’s public universities say they are also grappling with higher costs for salary increases — mandated in the wake of the fallout of wage-capping provincial legislation later deemed unconstitutional — as well as the loss of international student tuition after the federal government’s clampdown on study permits.
And a recent three-year funding boost from the province doesn’t come anywhere close to covering those costs, said Steve Orsini, president and CEO of the Council of Ontario Universities.
“Without the additional financial support, more and more Ontario high school students will be unable to attend a program of their choice in Ontario,” Orsini told the Star.
The council’s update comes on the one-year anniversary of the release of the province’s own blue-ribbon expert panel report that recommended the government allow colleges and universities to immediately raise tuition by five per cent while also boosting funding by 10 per cent for 2024-25.
Based on the panel’s recommendations, colleges and universities had expected about $2.5 billion over three years. Instead, the government has so far provided about half that. It also implemented an ongoing tuition freeze after cutting rates by 10 per cent in 2019.
The panel also urged the government to address so-called “corridor” funding, where schools are given upper and lower domestic enrolment limits and grants based on a midpoint within that corridor; any students beyond that are considered unfunded, apart from the tuition they pay.Â
Corridor midpoints have remained the same since 2016 despite rising enrolment.
Some 450,000 domestic students, both undergraduate and graduate, currently study at Ontario universities, and about 28,000 of them are above the corridor for funding — who, if funded, would have added a total of about $245 million to their schools’ budgets.
Without changes, an extra 77,000 students by 2030 would be unfunded, which the universities say they can’t afford.
(The government did provide $93 million in one-time funding for unfunded students in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, subject areas.)
Last week in the legislature, Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn was asked about post-secondary finances. He noted the government had pledged a $903 million “sustainability fund,” with $700 million of it over three years to colleges and universities, with a $203 million extra set aside for schools that are especially struggling.
“Twenty per cent of our colleges and universities received a 15 per cent increase over last year’s base funding,” Quinn said. “On top of that, 22 per cent of our institutions received a 10 per cent increase. We are fiscally managing the situation, and through this targeted approach, the ministry will be providing significant financial support where it’s needed the most in the sector.”
Figures provided by the universities’ council show that their share of extra funding is $148 million for 2024-25, when Bill 124 salary increases and federal cuts to international study permits add up to a total shortfall of $656 million.
In 2025-26, the extra government funding will amount to $178 million, when Bill 124 costs will hit $266 million and the cost of losing international students will almost double to $611 million — for a total of $877 million.
Universities are now getting set to renew five-year funding agreements with the government, as inflation also continues to eat away at their budgets.
“We are looking to the province to take additional steps to close the funding gap by increasing per student operating grants and lifting the funding cap on domestic students to ensure that universities can provide the space for more than an additional 100,000 Ontario high school students that are expected to apply to an Ontario university by 2030,” Orsini said.
And as schools start to look at next year’s budget, given they receive the lowest per-student funding in Canada, Orsini said they are already hitting a “financial cliff.”Â
Ten of Ontario’s public universities had a combined deficit of more than $300 million in 2023-24 alone. Carleton and Windsor universities have already said more cuts will be needed to balance the books.
The blue-ribbon panel found that universities, for the most part, operate efficiently, though savings could be found in administration — but that alone won’t bridge the funding gap.
University of Waterloo President Vivek Goel said his school faced a $75-million shortfall for this school year and imposed across-the board cuts, among other reductions.
The university, considered one of the most prestigious in North America for STEM education — often referred to as Canada’s MIT — has been “clawing away” at money set aside for significant capital and infrastructure projects, he said.
“It’s like using money set aside for your roof repair to pay the mortgage,” Goel told the Star. “At some point, it’s going to catch up with you.”
Waterloo takes in about eight per cent more students than the province provides funding for, which “translates into about $25 million of grant revenue” that’s lost.
He said the previous Liberal government indicated it would boost the enrolment corridor caps, but nothing changed.Â
“We can’t meet the demand there is for many of our programs because we don’t have the grant funding for those students,” Goel said. “There are going to be some very difficult conversations that our institution and other institutions will have.”
He hopes the next funding agreement with the province will provide additional grants to boost enrolment in high-demand degrees, given the Ford government has indicated that it wants students to study STEM.
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