The Finances of the University: Lakehead 2026 Edition

  

Universities in Ontario have been feeling somewhat more upbeat this year in the wake of provincial government measures to bolster the sector. After years of essentially starving the sector with a tuition cut and freeze as well as a continued freeze in operating grant funding, 2026 saw the announcement of combined measures totalling nearly $6.4 billion (at least according to the government’s accounting) to make the sector more sustainable.  Not least of which was a move to finally allow universities to once again begin increasing tuition rates on domestic students by up to 2 percent a year.  While this will likely not make up the revenue drop from the decline in international students, it is also being accompanied by increases in base funding to the system.

The government finally moved on the university sector funding issue because quite frankly the sector was at the end of its rope. However, even with the new funding which has pulled the sector back from the “abyss”  it remains that in the end it is not so much a rebuild as a halt to deepening the financial pit. Even with the funding, universities remain in austerity mode and with many continuing in deficit mode, they will still be making cuts.  And all this will be in the face of what is anticipated to be rising demand and a projection that nearly one million additional university educated workers will be needed in Ontario between 2026 and 2035. This is not a surprise given that since 2018, Ontario has added nearly two million people largely through immigration and immigrants being younger on average than the general population have children who will be seeking education. On top of this, a massive retirement boom is coming meaning numerous vacancies will need to be filled.

Through all this flux and financial challenge, some universities have managed to do better than expected this year financially and while one always expects University of Toronto to do relatively well and balance its budget, Lakehead is also expecting to balance its budget for the 2026/27 fiscal year.  Lakehead appears to be holding its own quite well in attracting targeted government funding for new initiatives whether they be a STEM Campus in Barrie or a new veterinary school, on top of the coming increases in both government base finding as well as higher tuition fees on domestic students.  Lakehead indeed was fortunate in not being as dependent on international undergraduates for its international student enrolment as some other universities. 

This comes on top of a relatively strong long-term financial performance because of its gradual transformation away from being a university for northwestern Ontario to a regional multi-campus Ontario university.  Indeed, Lakehead with its three campuses of Thunder Bay, Orillia and Barrie in one university has become the holy trinity of universities.  The Barrie campus will bring special financial blessings as it is in the center of a compact CMA population of 250,000 meaning that ultimately its enrolment may even eclipse that of the Thunder Bay campus.  This will all build on a rather successful tradition of prudent long-term financial management and soundness as documented below. The data for the subsequent charts come from historical Institutional Statistics Books accumulated for the 2000 to 2011 period (eg. Institutional Statistics Book 2001/02) as well as annual university financial statements.

Figure 1 plots revenues, expenditures and deficits annually from 2000 to 2025.  From revenues and expenditures of just under $80 million annually in 2000, by 2025, Lakehead’s revenues had grown to $246 million and expenditures to $231 million. In 2025, Lakehead ran a surplus of $15.4 million which followed 2024 with a surplus of $7.6 million.  Indeed, Lakehead has usually managed to run surpluses with deficits being incurred in only 6 of the last 26 fiscal years with an accumulated surplus since 2000 of $89.7 million. 

 

 

The biggest deficit was of course pandemic induced in 2021-22 but surpluses have grown every year since. As a result, long term debt has gradually been whittled down as Figure 2 illustrates.  There was a surge in university long-term debt during the 2000 to 2006 period as the Orillia expansion was started and new buildings such as the ATAC constructed on campus.  Long-term debt peaked in 2012 at $115 million and by 2025 had declined to $94 billion.  

 

 

The major revenue drivers during this period have been the duo of government operating grants and student tuition revenue as illustrated in Figure 3.  However, government operating grants were essentially flat between 2012 and 2024 at just over $60 million but then surged from $61 million in 2024 to $69.5 million in 2025. They have nevertheless declined from a peak of 41 percent of university revenues in 2012 to 28 percent in 2025.  Meanwhile, tuition revenues, reflecting the rise in international students, have grown quite steadily both as a share of revenues as well as in total.  Indeed, in 2025, at $102 million, tuition fees accounted for 42 percent of Lakehead University total revenues.  Other revenues aside from operating grants and tuition which together account for 70 percent of university revenues include income from investments, ancillary fees and revenues (e.g., Parking) and restricted government grants and funds.

 

 

Of course, the reason we are all here at Lakehead is because of the students and no exposition of university finances would be complete without looking at the trends in enrollment. Figure 4 plots total enrollment at Lakehead (headcount of both full and part time students) from 2001 to 2025.  There was rapid growth from 2001 to 2011 that saw enrolment rise by about 40 percent.  Enrollment then levelled off for nearly a decade but has begun to grow since 2022 and now sits at a headcount of just over 9,000 spread out as it is across three campuses.  It remains that over this period there has been a decline in the share of Thunder Bay campus undergraduate enrollment which has been made up by graduate enrollment across all the campuses and undergraduate enrolment in Orillia in particular. 

 

 

In the end, the university has managed to grow its enrolment in a particularly challenging demographic environment given until recently stagnant population growth in the region. Part of its financial management has also involved restraining costs.  In this regard, Lakehead has been assisted by two factors.  First, the total full time faculty complement has remained relatively stable since 2010 while enrolment has risen reflecting more intensive human resource use.  In that year, there were just over 300 full time faculty appointments at Lakehead and in 2025, there were also just over 300 full time faculty appointments.  While the number of full-time faculty has remained essentially fixed since 2010, total headcount enrollment has grown nearly 14 percent and as a result the average student headcount to full time faculty ratio grown from approximately 25 per faculty member to 31. 

Second, there was the impact of Ontario’s Bill C-124 which was brought in in 2019 capping salary increases at 1 percent in the broader public sector and was in effect until 2024.  Low salary growth rates combined with stable faculty numbers is an effective cost management tool and the fruit is borne out by the charts provided here.  Lakehead has managed to grow its revenues faster than costs over a sustained long-term period that has seen balanced budgets or surpluses in three quarters of the fiscal years since 2000.  It has also expanded its infrastructure to encompass three campuses to recruit more students while at the same time gradually reducing its long-term debt from a pronounced peak.   In a tough and competitive environment, Lakehead has managed to thrive, and its financial state is a success story that should be celebrated.

Applications Growing at Ontario Universities

  

Fall 2026 may see a bumper crop of undergraduates at most Ontario universities given the recent application statistics from the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre. As of April 8, 2026, there were 600,912 applications from Ontario Secondary School Students (OSSS) and 205,044 applications from All Other Applicants (AOA) (a mix of out of province, mature students and international applicants) for a total of 805,956 applications.  Applications from OSSS were up 2.2 percent from last year while AOAs were up 9.1 percent suggesting that some measure of recovery is underway in terms of international students applications.  Of course, these are the number of applications, and one can apply to multiple universities.  If one looks simply at the number of applications, total applicants in the 2025 cycle totalled 159,310 whereas for 2026 the individuals total 168,919 for an increase of 6 percent. The growth in individuals applying is even more pronounced when it comes to AOAs which have grown 12.4 percent as opposed to 2.3 percent for OSSS.

Figure 1 plots the ranked percentage change in undergraduate applications by Ontario Secondary School Students by institution. The largest increases (not shown here due to scaling issues) were for Université de l’Ontario Français (166.7 percent) and Université de Hearst (11.1 percent).  However, there were only a total of 20 applications to Hearst and 88 to l’Ontario Francais. Notwithstanding these two, the fastest growing OSSS applications were for Nipissing (9.9 percent), Western-Huron (8.5 percent), Guelph (8.2 percent) and Lakehead (6.3 percent).  There were also declines in applications with the largest being OCAD (-9.9 percent), Western-Kings (-9.7 percent), Algoma (-8.2 percent) and Waterloo (-3.5 percent).  It should be noted that application increases and declines do not necessarily automatically translate into enrolment changes as with each applicant making three or four applications, what matters is the conversion rate of applications into bums in seats.  As well, even with a decline of 1 percent, a university like U of T should have no problem filling up its ffirst-year entry slots given it has received over 68,000 applications and first year intake is about 17,000 students.

 

Figure 2 plots the ranked percentage change for the All-Other Applicants category and here the largest increases are Hearst, Algoma, Toronto and Carleton, while declines only affected Nipissing (-3.8 percent) and Western King’s (-17.5 percent). Finally, Figure 3 plots the percentage changes in total university undergraduate application statistics. While L’Ontario Francais and Hearst are at the top here, their extremely low application totals effectively move us to the next top performer which is Guelph at 8.6 percent followed by Western-Huron (8.1 percent), Queen’s (7.7 percent), Carleton (7.5 percent) and then Nipissing and Lakehead at 7.5 percent and 7.3 percent respectively.  Declines mark Trent, Windsor, Waterloo, OCAD and Western-Kings.  

 

As noted, while the number of application statistics are important, the conversion to bums in seats is more important and the chief indicator there is whether the application is a first, second or third choice and those statistics do not appear to have been posted yet.   However, what is important is that the growth in applications this year has been quite good despite the challenges.  The total number of applicants is up 6 percent even though the provincial government announced the end of the tuition freeze and a reorientation of the Ontario Student Assistance Program towards loans as opposed to grants. However, the Ontario economy has slowed considerably, and post-secondary attendance tends to rise during tougher economic times.  The ultimate test is not the number of applications, but what actual enrolment will be come September. Still, it looks a lot better than one might have expected.

The Finances of the University: Lakehead’s Exceptional Performance

 

With all the doom and gloom about the finances of Canadian universities these days, it is refreshing to know that some universities have been doing well in coping with all the fiscal challenges thrown at them over the last decade.  Nowhere is this more the case than in Ontario where domestic tuition fees were cut 10 percent in 2018 by the province, and have remained frozen since, provincial government grants have generally been a declining source of revenue and the flow of international students curtailed by the federal government. While Ontario produced Laurentian, it has also produced Lakehead where the last decade has seen a better financial performance than one might have expected which is good news for Thunder Bay, northwestern Ontario and of course the students, staff and faculty at Lakehead.

The evidence is quite convincing.  Figure 1 (and subsequent figures) takes data from the audited financial statements of Lakehead University from 2014 to 2025 and plots total revenues and expenditures.  Between 2014 and 2025, Lakehead’s total revenues grew from $177.3 million to $246.0 million - 38.7 percent – while total expenditures grew from $167.0 million to $230.5 million – a 38 percent increase.  While the pandemic period from 2020 to 2022 saw a dip in revenue growth, since 2022, revenues have managed to grow faster than spending. Indeed, over the period 2015 to 2025, the average annual growth rate of revenues was 3.3 percent compared to 3.0 percent for expenditures.  

 

 

The result has been a decade where the budget has usually been balanced, sometimes with substantial surpluses, and the long-term debt been reduced.  Figure 2 plots Lakehead University’s deficits (-)/surpluses (+) as well as the total long-term debt again from 2014 to 2025.  Out of these 12 budget years, Lakehead ran a surplus 75 percent of the time with an accumulated surplus of $43.9 million while the long-term debt has decreased nearly 16 percent going from $111.5 million in 2014 to $94.0 million in 2025.  The worse deficit year was 2022 with a deficit of $16.7 million in the wake of the pandemic but the three years since has seen growing surpluses with 2025 at $13.5 million.

 

 

Drilling down into some of the data, Figure 3 presents the data for Lakehead’s major revenue sources – provincial government grants and student fees.  In 2025, these sources made up 82 percent of Lakehead’s revenue with the remainder a combination including investment income, research income, ancillary fees, and sales of goods and services.  The narrative regarding provincial government grants should be nuanced by the fact that there are the general operating grants and then more specific restricted grants tied to conditions.  In 2014, the value of the operating grant was $65.3 million, and it then proceeded to decline through to 2019 when it reached $62.9 million.  Note that this decline preceded the arrival of the Ford government in 2018 showing that in the end universities in Ontario do not have any tried-and-true political party friends at the provincial level. Grants then rebounded in 2020 declining to a low of $61.6 million in 2022. Since 2022, the operating grant has been somewhat erratic rising to $66.7 million in 2023, falling to $61.0 million in 2024 and then climbing again to $69.5 million in 2025.  Stable funding it is not.  As for restricted grants, they climbed in fits and starts going from $15 million in 2014 to almost $17 million by 2021 and then rising more steeply to 30.5 million in 2025. 

 

 

While total provincial grants to Lakehead grew 25 percent from 2014 to 2025, the real revenue story is in student fees which rose from $57.5 million to $102.4 million – an increase of 78 percent.  This is even though overall enrolment has grown but not in leaps and bounds.  The revenue increase is largely the result of a compositional shift as more higher tuition paying international students arrived at the university.  Given that many of these students are primarily graduate level and in disciplines that are in demand, it appears the immigration restrictions have not hit Lakehead’s enrolment as hard as some other universities.  This suggests a careful mix of programs tailored to demand.

So, to summarize, Figure 4 presents the average annual growth rates of these major indicators for the 2015 to 2025 period.  Total revenue at Lakehead has grown at an average annual rate of 3.3 percent while expenditures have grown 3 percent.  This in and of itself presents a picture of fiscal sustainability rooted on both the expenditure and revenue side.  While general operating grants have only grown at an average annual rate of 0.7 percent, restricted grants (targeted to some purpose) have grown 8.7 percent annually and student fee revenue has grown 5.5 percent.  And the icing on the cake is that long-term debt has been declining at -1.5 percent annually. 

 

This is extremely good news and evidence that even in today’s challenging university environment, it is possible to succeed both financially and academically as a university offering programs in a fiscally sustainable manner.  Lakehead has managed this operating as it does in a dispersed fashion with campuses in Thunder Bay, Orillia and Barrie making it a province wide university.  This success may indeed serve as a model for future of Ontario’s universities. This success is also a testament to the strength of its board and administrative leadership as well as its students, staff and faculty.  It is nice to have some good news for a change.

The State of Post Secondary Education: Crisis or Opportunity?

 

It is another academic year, and recent reports have helped kick off its start with analysis and introspection regarding the state of university and college education in Canada.  There is the OECD international compendium of indicators titled Education at a Glance 2025 which covers all aspects of education including post-secondary or tertiary education.  Then there is Alex Usher’s Higher Education Strategy Associates compilation The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada 2025. And last but certainly not least there is the Royal Bank’s ominously titled Testing Times Fending off a crisis in Canadian postsecondary education. There is indeed quite a bit of reading here geared towards understanding the current situation with respect to postsecondary education in Canada and other parts of the world.

Canada boasts a highly skilled and well-educated population with 63 percent of population aged 15 to 64 holding some type of post-secondary or tertiary degree attainment. However, in terms of the distribution of those degrees, Canada ranks 26^th out of 41 OECD countries, in the share of 25–34-year-olds with master’s degrees.  Meanwhile, Canada is unique in that it boasts the largest proportion in the OECD – one quarter – of degrees being what they term short-cycle degrees.  These are programmes usually offered by community colleges and similar educational institutions, of at least two years duration, and are vocationally oriented.  While there is often a lament that Canada needs more skills and career-based training, it appears that a large proportion of the system is indeed geared that way.

On the surface, the demand for post-secondary education in Canada should grow in coming years based on demographic projections showing the total number of individuals aged 15 to 19 and 20 to 24 growing until at least the mid 2030s, then levelling off or declining for a few years before resuming substantial growth.  Recall that the 15-19 population pool was shrinking during the 2010 to 2020 period though increases in participation rates combined with the flow of international students helped grow university enrolment.

However, when it comes to public sector spending on tertiary education, Canada is below the OECD average n USD per capita.  Government expenditure on post-secondary in Canada amounts to USD 13,684 per tertiary student compared to the OECD average of USD 15,102.  And, as noted by Alex Usher, spending on higher education as a share of the economy in Canada has been dropping pretty steadily since 2011.  

So, there are challenges facing Canadian postsecondary education spanning financial, technological and social levels.  The financial challenge to post-secondary institutions in Canada is quite serious and has been aggravated by provincial and federal policies.  In Ontario, for example, university tuition for domestic students was cut by 10 percent in 2018 by the Ford government and has been frozen at that nominal level ever since.  Indeed, the RBC Testing Times report notes that most undergraduates in Canada are paying approximately what they would have paid a decade ago.  Universities made up a lot of the revenue by admitting more international students, but that tap has been cut off too by changes in federal immigration policies.  Going forward universities will face tighter revenue circumstances accompanied by rising costs.  After all, inflation has not just hit individuals, but institutions also.

The RBC report notes that post-secondary education and skills they impart are vital to the dealing with the economic changes facing Canada but add that: “Without a new financial arrangement, institutions are forced to make decisions with their viability in mind, rather than the country’s prosperity. These decisions will have important implications for education quality and access, especially in rural communities where workforce shortages are already acute, as well as the country’s ability to retain top talent”. They suggest boosting government funding to the post-secondary sector tied to specific criteria or outcomes.  As well, they think student fees – that is – tuition could play a greater role.  

However, the financial challenge is only the tip of the iceberg given that there are more serious existential challenges: technological and social which are both intertwined with AI.    The rise of AI in the short term is posing challenges to how classes are taught and students graded and assessed but in the longer run will affect the demand for university and college education as well as its role in shaping society.  As an article by Ryan Craig in Forbes argued, AI will likely shrink the university given its potential for personalized learning and independent tutoring. 

More optimistic but not any less transformative, Nick Ladny (also in Forbes) makes the case for the end of college as we know it with AI facilitating customized corporate education, transforming the role of faculty into mentors facilitating human interaction rather than purveyors of knowledge, more decentralized neighborhood campuses, and smartphone provision of education.  Those institutions that adapt quickly to the new reality will survive while others will simply close.  Nimbleness is key to dealing with change and universities in general tend to move slowly.

However, universities and colleges have faced the onslaught of change before and yet here they still are.  I think the next decade will see a major sorting of universities into those that successfully adopt and transition to the world of AI education and those that do not.  There will likely be changes in the types of courses and programs taught given that AI can do much more so much more quickly and effectively.  There will need to be new skill sets that involve the application of technology and AI tools to analyzing, interpreting and solving human problems.  Some jobs that right now are performed by skilled professionals such as accountants, lawyers and even physicians, can be automated by AI.  On the other hand, asking the right questions and interpreting the answers will be a skill that AI with its tendency to essentially compile and regurgitate what exists or apply set algorithms to data will not be able to perform as effectively as a creative and intelligent human.  This suggests that the teaching roles and administrative functioning of the university are likely to see the biggest changes from AI while the research function can be transformed in more positive ways.

When I think of my own discipline of Economics, I think posing interesting research questions and devising approaches to their solution via theory will remain a human endeavor, but the compilation of facts and rudimentary processing of data will be largely automated by AI. A well-trained economist with a wealth of theoretical and empirical knowledge will be able to harness AI to do creative things whether it is modelling long-term business cycle fluctuations or assessing the full quantitative impact of economic and social variables in economic history. 

On the other hand, AI can do more mundane things like model the economic impact of a construction project or a value of life calculation resulting to a significant drop in the demand for many economic consulting services.  In the long run, this will likely make the economics profession and indeed many others smaller and more elitist in their structure.  Economists will set directions and design the questions and validate the results with much of the menial mental and data grind done by AI.

In the end, universities will not disappear.  They will evolve into on and off ramps on the information highway rather than destinations in and of themselves.  They will also retain valuable social functions in terms of providing a human social environment for the young to learn how to function in this new economy and to develop human relation and networking skills. Faculty will still be required to mentor and guide and set directions but there will be fewer of them.  And, as AI is very good at automating routine things, most university administrations will likely see significant downsizing as human resources, payroll and even basic academic advising and student services can be automated. It will indeed be a new age, but successful universities will seize opportunity, evolve, and persevere rooted as they are in the depths of the past but continuing to the end of the human age.

 

Can Ontario's Universities Be Made Sustainable? Part 1-The Issues

 

Ontario’s post-secondary system is facing the problem of financial sustainability.   Indeed, the inevitable question arises of whether Ontario simply has too many colleges and universities.  An excellent overview of this question with an accompanying discussion is available here.  And of course, there is always Alex Usher’s excellent blog on all aspects of Canadian universities with posts over the years on provincial and Ontario university finances.  However, the question I wish to address in light of the evolution of Ontario university finances is whether the system can actually be made sustainable with sustainability defined as having the resources available to fund desired expenditures. 

 

Resources are of course the revenues available to universities and they need to be compared to expenses.  Figure 1 plots the total revenues and expenditures of the Ontario university system as a whole from 2001 and 2022 and based on this very simple metric, the system as a whole is “sustainable.”  In 2022, the system took in $17.5 billion in total revenues whereas total expenditures were $17.2.  However, this is overly simplistic because Ontario universities do not function as a system per se but as 24 institutions (20 publicly supported universities and four associated universities).  Some of these institutions-usually large research intensive ones in southern Ontario -  have been running substantial surpluses but a rather large number have been running deficits and acquiring debt with the most extreme example  of what can happen there being the Laurentian insolvency.

 

 

 

The challenges facing a number of smaller institutions in particular and especially in Ontario’s north is that their revenues are having difficulty keeping up with expenditures.  Part of the issue is that provincial government grants have essentially not been growing over time and provincial funding as a share of total university revenues has declined as illustrated in Figure 2.  This leaves student tuition and fees and a plethora of other sources ranging from miscellaneous federal funds, ancillary fees, to investment income as the sources of sustainability.  Tuition fees have grown since 2001 from 24 percent of total university revenues to 45 percent in 2022.  The provincial share of university revenues has declined over the same period from 36 to 24 percent while all other remaining sources have also declined from 39 to 31 percent.  Notes again, that performance across individual universities may differ substantially.  Northern Ontario universities face particular challenges in growing domestic enrollment given that population is clustered in the GTA.

 

 

 

After a period of long-term provincial government behaviour which has essentially constricted their provincial grant funding and shifted reliance to tuition and other sources, the crux of the current set of issues is as follows.  Since 2018, domestic tuition in Ontario was cut by ten percent and then frozen.  Grant revenue has also been essentially frozen.  Universities in the GTA with access to a lot of students have boosted their domestic enrollment to generate revenues.  Universities without easy access to the GTA and its demographic advantages have recruited more international students, but all Ontario universities (and colleges in particular) have gone this route.  However, that door is now being shut at least in the short term by the federal government over concerns about immigration affecting housing stocks.

 

In the short term, the provincial government also finally responded in spring budget 2024 to its Blue-Ribbon Panel Report which called for tuition increases and increased provincial funding of $2.5 billion dollars  by providing a short term funding reprieve to universities that entailed about $1.3 billion over three years.  This is really half of what was recommended by the government’s own panel and was accompanied by an extension of the tuition freeze.  The Council of Ontario Universities noted this assistance while welcome  has fallen far short of what was needed and that eight universities are still forecasting operating deficits for 2023-24 and 12 are projecting deficits for 2024-25. 

 

So, where do we go from here?  Well, the problem really is this: Ontario does not want to pay for the university and college system it currently has.  It certainly wants local universities with a broad range of programs to educate their children, but it does not want to pay for them. Ontario has too many universities (and colleges for that matter) given what seems to be the expressed willingness to pay by governments and the public.  The Ontario public does not want to pay more for universities in terms of out-of-pocket tuition nor does it want to pay more in terms of increased government funding especially if it requires raising taxes.  This has been a feature of Ontario’s political culture for quite a few decades now, no matter the political stripe of the government.  This means that expenditures of the current system need to be tailored to what Ontarians as demonstrated by the actions of their government seem to wish to pay. More on that in a post to come.

AI, the Creative Class, and Universities

 

The concern over AI usurping human functions and activities continues to grow.  A recent article in The Economist lays out how AIs like ChatGPT could replace many white collar employees such as telemarketers, traders and even teachers.  Indeed, some of the sectors that will be most impacted include securities and commodity traders, insurance carriers, data processing and hosting, publishing, and believe it or not, monetary authorities and central banks (this one is actually quite amusing as many people feel central banks have computer like personalities anyway).   In terms of the least impacted sectors,  after a century of automation, it is the revenge of the blue collar workers as the least impact of AI will be in areas like agriculture and forestry, woods products, mining, and food  and drink services.  Most exposed are industries which rely on programming and writing skills or what is sometimes termed the creative class.  Indeed, teachers especially those in literature, languages and history are also expected to be heavily affected. 

 

In the university sector, never one to shirk from the fad of the day, one suspects that there may indeed be a push towards AI instruction and course provision especially in subjects deemed heavy in language intensity. It will certainly be interesting to see how all of this evolves over the next decade and whether there will indeed be a substitution of AI instructors and course managers for in person teaching in a range of subjects.  Of course, the use of AI need not apply only to faculty.  University administration is also language intensive and rule driven and one could easily conceive  situations where universities dispense with administrators and replace them with semi-sentient AIs that devise, apply and enforce assorted rules for both students and faculty.  Try arguing with the AI for an assignment extension or sabbatical leave.  However, the cost savings would probably be significant given that nearly two thirds of university budgets these days are not directly faculty/teaching related.  Even assorted adjudication processes at a university such as university tenure committees could theoretically be done by an AI.  Indeed, the committees would be tireless and would always have quorum.  It would be a brave new world indeed.

 

Looking for an example of how AI can be applied to language intensive university administrative processes? I asked one of the AIs that I use to provide me with the executive summary of the quintessential university administrative slog – the strategic plan.  No university was named, so it is applicable to all.  Here is what I got:

 

ME: Draft me an executive summary of a five year university strategic plan that encompasses academic excellence, diversity and inclusiveness, innovation and research excellence.

 

AI: Executive Summary

This five-year strategic plan outlines the vision, goals, and objectives that will guide the university's growth and development in areas of academic excellence, diversity and inclusiveness, innovation, and research excellence. The plan focuses on enhancing the university's profile as a leading institution of higher education, which is committed to providing a supportive and inclusive environment for all students, faculty, and staff.

Academic Excellence

The plan emphasizes academic excellence, which is at the core of the university's mission. To achieve this goal, the university will focus on providing innovative, high-quality academic programs designed to meet the needs of the current and future job markets. The university will also evaluate and enhance its teaching methods, assessment practices, and curriculum to achieve academic rigor and reflective of modern pedagogy.

Diversity and Inclusiveness

The plan recognizes that diversity and inclusiveness is a strength that enhances the university's educational experience. To create a diverse and inclusive community, the university will champion efforts to recruit, retain, and support underrepresented student groups and faculty members. The university will also prioritize anti-bias training and provide resources to foster an inclusive and equitable campus for all.

Innovation

To promote innovation, the university will leverage the resources of the institution to support initiatives that spur entrepreneurship, creativity, and industry partnerships. The university will invest in technology and research infrastructure to improve its innovation capabilities and promote a culture of invention and commercialization.

Research Excellence

The university aims to be a leading institution in research excellence. The plan outlines objectives to promote research collaboration, increase funding, and support the recruitment of high-impact researchers. The university will establish interdisciplinary research initiatives that foster innovative discoveries and contribute to societal and economic development.

In conclusion, this five-year strategic plan is designed to strengthen the university's commitment to academic excellence, diversity and inclusiveness, innovation, and research excellence. Through these efforts, the university will attract and retain top talent, enhance its reputation, and advance the social and economic well-being of the local and global communities.

 

Can you tell the difference?  Will we be able to tell the difference between a class well-taught in person by a knowledgeable and versatile human being with social skills and a faceless AI? Maybe.  Will we ultimately be able to tell the difference between a university administrative process done by humans or an AI?  I think we all know the answer to that.  

 

 

Blue Ribbons and Ontario Universities

 

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.

 

 

 

Ontario Universities: Is More Competition Underway?

 

Ontario universities saw the release this week of the preliminary application statistics for the 2023-24 academic year by OUAC, and they are quite intriguing given that they suggest that there may be a shift underway in how students both apply and make their ultimate choices.  These applications are for full-time, first-year, fall-entry, undergraduate university study or 101s as they are known, and applications are up 2.9 percent this year though the number of applicants is down slightly by about one-firth of one percent.  Figure 1 plots both applications and applicants over the period 2014 to 2023 and though both exhibit a rising trend the number of applicants has been more volatile as a result of the pandemic year. 

 

 

 

What is more interesting is Figure 2 which divides the number of applications by the number of applicants in each year and reveals that over time individual applicants have been applying to more universities.  From 4.6 applications per applicant in 2014 to 5.8 in 2023.  This suggests that students are open to considering more options either because they are shopping around or perhaps to ensure that they get into a program they desire.  In any event, this alone suggests that university recruitment out of Ontario high schools may be getting a bit more competitive.

 

 

 More evidence to this effect is provided in Figures 3 to 5.  Figure 3 ranks Ontario’s universities with constituent affiliated campuses included with the main campus (for example, King’s, Brescia and Huron are included with Western) and there is definitely a pecking order in terms of application totals: Large (University of Toronto, York, McMaster, Toronto Metropolitan, Western, Waterloo and Guelph: 59,218 to 40,461), Medium (Queen's, Ottawa U, Wilfrid Laurier, Carleton, Brock, Trent, Ontario Tech, and Windsor: 37,638 to 10,665) and Small (Lakehead, Laurentian, Nipissing, OCAD, Algoma and Universite de l'Ont Francais: 3573 to 22).  Yes, 22 for Universite de l'Ontario Francais which because it had only 14 applicants last year it registers the largest percent increase in 101s of all Ontario universities at 57 percent making it such an obvious outlier that it is omitted from Figure 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4 plots the universities ranked by the percent increase in preliminary 101 applications in 2023.  Some of the largest increases are for smaller universities.  Of the top 10, only two are in the large university category – Guelph and York – while four are in the medium category – Windsor, Ontario Tech, Wilfrid Laurier and Brock - and the other four are all smaller institution – Nipissing, Laurentian, Lakehead and Algoma. Coincidentally, all four of these are in northern Ontario.  Figure 5 plots the percent increase in 101s applying in 2023 against the number of applications in 2022 for these institutions and there is a definite correlation between size and growth.  Smaller places in terms of previous application numbers on average seem to be seeing higher growth in applications this year.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, to keep things in perspective, this does not mean that University of Toronto or McMaster are going to have trouble filling their first-year classes this year.  The main competition is still between the bigger places. They have way more applications than they need to fill their spaces making them still the overwhelming choice for most.  The seven largest universities ranked by applications accounted for about 64 percent of applications.  The eight medium sized places accounted for 34 percent and the remaining small universities accounted for just over 2 percent.  The small furry mammals are hardly a threat to the larger denizens of Ontario’s university system.  Still, the fact that their application numbers are up suggests that some students may be becoming more open to venturing outside their home communities which are invariably close to the GTA.  As well, students in these communities with smaller universities may be deciding not to go to school in higher cost centers. The cost of living in the GTA for students away from home is undoubtedly a factor in these inflationary times and so we may be seeing the smaller more out of the way places improving their enrollment at least at the margin.  This should hopefully spill over into budgetary positions given that Ontario universities have faced freezes in both their tuition and government grant revenues.