Ontario has made a number of announcements regarding its post-secondary education sector. First, it extended its tuition freeze for a third year. As you might recall, going into the pandemic, Ontario reduced domestic student tuition fees by ten percent and since then has held them frozen meaning that after three years of time and inflation, in real terms tuition has been reduced by at least twenty percent. Though not emphasized this week, Ontario’s government grants to its universities also remain largely frozen. As a result, with flat domestic enrollment and frozen funding, at the margin, Ontario university revenues have only been growing because they have been recruiting international students making them increasingly reliant on what could be a volatile source of revenue.
However, the provincial government is concerned enough about the future sustainability of its universities that it has also announced a Blue Ribbon Panel to “provide advice and recommendations to the Minister of Colleges and Universities to help keep the post-secondary education sector financially strong and focused on providing the best student experience possible. ” A blue ribbon panel or committee is generally a group of “exceptional” and “accomplished” people who are brought together to study a particularly vexing problem and bring their expertise to bear on providing solutions. It is several notches below a Royal Commission but designed to bring a semblance of non-partisan expert advice to a problem. This panel is expected to report back in summer of 2023.
Now it has already been remarked that there are no faculty representatives on this Blue Ribbon Panel. However, it would be churlish to say the least to infer that the provincial government in any way thinks that university or college faculty are neither exceptional or accomplished. In trying to choose faculty representatives for such a committee, one opens a can of worms larger than the universe. If the provincial government had selected someone from the humanities, professional schools and sciences would have complained they were being neglected. If a scientist, the humanities would have been outraged. If they chose a faculty member from a large university, the small universities would have complained. If they had picked an economist, there would have been a chorus of criticism charging that the outcome was predetermined by selecting a minion of the capitalist neoconservative hegemony. You get the picture.
So in the end, the government chose a panel from people that it sees as leaders without a direct current stake in universities to study the problem. There are no faculty nor do there appear to be any currently serving university administrators on the panel either, though they all have links to post-secondary education in one form or another as well as board and community experience. There is a member with student experience. And there is past faculty and administrative experience in the case of Bonnie Patterson and Alan Harrison – who incidentally is also an economist who was at McMaster teaching at the time I was there in the 1980s. There does seem to be an emphasis on CEO types with some financial experience and also strong representation from the new age of e-learning and other types of perceived innovative practices in education with CEOs from E-Campus Ontario and Contact North.
So, what will the panel decide? Well, that is to be decided obviously though I suspect e-learning and micro-credentials is one direction they are likely to emphasize. That will not please some universities who are trying to bring everyone back to the before times with full in person learning and on campus presences including night classes. However, this is motivated as much for pedagogical reasons as it is for financial ones rooted in the need to fill parking lots, residences, and cafeterias with paying customers.
The crux of the problem is
that the provincial government thinks universities should be training people and
providing marketable skills and is not happy where the money seems to be going. Parents and students think that universities
are supposed to provide the ticket to a career and lifestyle and do not seem to
think the tuition fees worth what they are getting – though they still insist
their kids go to university. Essentially,
the provincial government and the public do not perceive they are getting value
for money especially given what appear to outsiders to be high paying cushy
jobs for university faculty and staff.
Meanwhile, university faculty believe they are independent researchers and scholars, building minds, and extending the frontiers of knowledge while university administrators seem to be conflicted players of whack-a-mole - negotiating the competing demands of government, parents and students, donors, and faculty and staff. As the old university adage about where the money should go goes, faculty like new faculty hires, Deans like new programs, while University Presidents like new buildings. So, the interim solution by government has been a grant and tuition freeze which universities have got around by bringing in more international students who can be charged as much as the market will bear.
Needless to say, this is not a scenario for long-term sustainability. Demographics suggest that domestic enrollment in Ontario has peaked and will remain flat for some time to come. Thus, without an increase in tuition fees, domestic students will not lead to increased revenues. Moreover, domestic students want a flexibility in their learning environments – i.e., online learning – that seems to be at odds with the preferences of many university administrators and faculty. Bringing in more international students is also not a stable long-term solution given that at any time that tap could shut. And then there is the question that if the Ontario public university system is something Ontario does not want to pay more for either via public funds or private (more tuition) and is increasingly geared to international students, then why should it be as large as it is?
This last question is the uncomfortable one but needs to be asked given the increasing financial stress Ontario universities are facing especially in the shadow of the Laurentian bankruptcy. Does Ontario have too many public universities given domestic demand? That is a question the Blue Ribbon Panel will inevitably have to answer. Perhaps there should be mergers and rationalizations culminating in several province wide campuses – A University of Southwestern Ontario, A University of Eastern Ontario, a University of Northern Ontario and then a half dozen or so fully comprehensive research universities? Should some universities be merged with community colleges to create Polytechnics? Should there be a provincial E-University to satisfy the demand for flexible credentials earned online? But then what of the rest of the system?
In the wake of the Laurentian debacle, the provincial government has nevertheless been creating new small financially weaker universities left right and center so it appears they are not too concerned that there may be too many universities. Moreover, all communities with their own current university campuses will scream if their university is no longer a “real” university or does not offer the range of programs they are used to having. Just don’t ask them to pay for it. The political cost of major change is high and as a result there is unlikely to be any major change.
My guess, is that along with keeping all the current players in Ontario’s university system, the end game is going to be the creation of assorted new online learning options independent of the current system and perhaps even new targeted private micro-universities that will provide the programs the provincial governments thinks should be offered. This is in keeping with the provincial government policy towards its post-secondary sector of the last thirty years that has allowed colleges to evolve into perceived lower cost universities and universities expand their physical footprints without much thought as to what might happen down the road.
Some of this is already underway and what the Blue Ribbon Panel may offer is some way of moving forward in a transitioning post-pandemic university environment that is still moving towards an unknown equilibrium. At minimum, it will provide a justification for what the government wants to do. On the other hand, the panel may surprise everyone – including the government - with their recommendations which is why governments do not necessarily follow what Blue Ribbon Panels or Royal Commissions for that matter, suggest they do.
