YUFA
External
Economists and Public Education Activists Examine Ontario Universities at OCUFA Conference
Report
submitted by Richard Wellen
‘Crisis talk’ was clearly the order of the day at last month’s OCUFA conference entitled “The Future of Ontario Universities: Challenges and Opportunities.” The one-day conference provided a remarkably broad and thorough forum for post-secondary specialists, economists, university administrators and social and labour activists who came to debate the policy dilemmas facing Ontario’s university system.
Most participants could agree that the degree of under-funding of the system had reached a decisive point, and that the chief problems were those of affordability and quality. These dilemmas have many dimensions, but, for the sake of convenience, they can be represented by the following questions:
(1) How can governments meet rising expectations of accessible university education at a time when they also face mounting costs in multiple areas like health care and infrastructure renewal?
(2) How can the post-secondary system sustain broader levels of enrolments while at the same time address ‘quality’ deficits associated with increasing student/faculty ratios and a declining ability to attract and retain qualified faculty?
(3) How will post-secondary institutions change as more influential stakeholders expect reform and renewal to be accompanied by greater accountability and stricter institutional mandates?
The depth of the underlying problems was spelled out by a public opinion poll (commissioned by OCUFA) as well as the usual comparisons with other jurisdictions.
The poll showed that the public believes in the traditional mission of universities and even values ‘broad education’ above all other categories. However, most respondents were very worried about their chance to enjoy the benefits of higher education at a time when degrees are becoming an increasingly important ingredient for career advancement and social and economic progress.
As for the comparative data, it was confirmed that our public universities in Ontario remain last among all ten provinces in per capita funding. Paul Davenport (President, Western) introduced some of the most revealing comparisons between the US and Ontario/Canadian systems. Three points made an especially large impression on me:
1. Since the early 90’s, public universities in the U.S. have enjoyed a 30% increase in government support, while Ontario universities find themselves doing with 20% less.
2. By 1998 average student/faculty ratios in Ontario were 35% higher than those in the U.S.
3. In comparing university enrolment rates (per 1000 people) the U.S. has a 12% edge over Canada at the undergraduate level, but a staggering 64% advantage at the level of graduate enrolment.
If there was general agreement about the nature of the challenges this certainly did not prevent the participants from disagreeing sharply about possible remedies and reforms. Some of these can be briefly outlined as follows:
Accessibility and
‘Who pays?’
Both economists and activists argued that accessibility and affordability is becoming a large issue on the public’s radar screen, mostly because of rising student debt and its growing impact on middle-class students. Each group professed to be worried about declining financial support from governments. But this is where agreement ended.
Economists like Ross Finnie (School of Policy Studies, Queens) claimed that tuition fee increases were a relatively minor part of the problem compared to the failure of governments to ‘target’ money at students most in need. He maintained that rolling back tuition fees by increasing government operating grants is a “blunt instrument” when it comes to addressing the question of access. This is because, in effect, tuition reductions become subsidies for the students of higher-income groups that account for the large bulk of enrolments in universities. He suggested that needs-based grants and loans with income-contingent payback provisions work better at broadening participation, especially since tuition costs are small compared to living costs. This approach would also be fairer since university education is only partly a public good that provides general benefits to all of society. In his view we need to start thinking about the large “private returns” of university education. According to Finnie more of the funding should come from the future earnings of those who benefit.
Activists like Joel Duff (Canadian Federation of Students) and Irene Harris (OFL) took issue with Finnie’s proposals. Their biggest worry was that the prospect of higher debts would scare off lower and middle-income groups. They also argued that abandoning the “benefits universality” associated with traditional government support would place us on the slippery slope of a privatized and two-tiered university system, which would eventually be less able to make a strong claim for public funding. Another fear – expressed by Martha Shaffer (Faculty of Law, University of Toronto) and Jackie Duffin (physician and medical historian at Queens University) - was that we have become blind to the kind of damage already done by recent large increases to professional school tuitions in areas like law, medicine and dentistry. Not only were there signs that these hikes had dramatically hindered social fairness and access, but also that the social role played by these professions would be distorted as graduates with high debt loads are driven away from social service areas of research and practice. These are excellent points rarely considered by many who are content to see those programs which supposedly offer lucrative “private” returns support themselves on a ‘user pay’ basis. In any case, Duff and Harris argued, beneficiaries of higher education already pay a proportionately greater share through the progressive income tax system.
It’s notable that neither side conceded any ground to the other. It is true that economists who want a ‘smarter’ and more ‘targeted’ funding model (with deferred payback based on income) sometimes seem to be satisfied to let net public contributions dwindle. They therefore often minimize the ‘public good’ characteristics of higher education. But it is equally true that those wanting tuition reductions do not always acknowledge that the biggest obstacles to access are tied to a complex mix of factors like social background and the burden of covering living costs by combining work and study. Creative ways of increasing means-tested assistance might therefore be in order, and that might mean that labour and student activists would have to think about new ways of reforming grants and loans for students, even if it means accepting some of the ‘targeting’ proposed by economists. Certainly in Ontario there is growing discontent with OSAP in the wake of the massive shift from grants to loans. Fortunately, most participants could agree that the federal government was on the wrong path by channelling their new spending through the tax system in the form of Education savings grants and tuition tax credits that mostly benefit richer families.
Institutional Diversity and Privatization
One of the most common responses to the squeeze on post-secondary institutions has been a call for institutional specialization, fee differentiation and increased privatization. If the university system is unsustainable, the argument goes, it is not only because ‘users’ don’t pay for what they get, but also because undifferentiated funding and unresponsive institutional models allow resources to be absorbed by productive and unproductive activities alike.
Following this line, some speakers, like TD Bank economist, Peter Drake, suggested that universities need to prod themselves to be more ‘efficient’ and ‘responsive’ in much the same way business firms are forced to do so in the marketplace. Drake was careful not to suggest that universities should become private, for-profit entities, but he did recommend that they be given greater freedom to charge different fees for different programs and courses. He also proposed that institutions should be allowed and encouraged to specialize on their marketable strengths. Finally he urged that a new regime for the commercialization of research be established, and his thinking was driven by the observation that U.S. universities not only have more research ‘output’, but also receive four times more revenue from their research output than Canadian universities do. These changes, he argued, would represent an opportunity to harness the rewards of innovation, putting universities in a better position to finance improvements to the quality teaching and research.
General reaction to some of these proposals was unenthusiastic to say the least. There was a great deal of concern about the direction of recent reforms, in particular the gradual emergence of specialized private universities and the prospect that there would be greater tiering in Canadian universities. In my view, this trend is a genuine threat that goes beyond familiar concerns about separating research and teaching. I think universities need to make a better argument about why many of their best characteristics depend upon an ongoing collaboration and cross-subsidization among different sectors and disciplines. Over reliance on targeted research funding, commercialization revenues (from licenses and patents) and institutional tiering often invites shortsighted decision-making. The same pattern could lead to the slow erosion of some liberal arts areas and, in the worst case, academic freedom. For this reason Davenport and other participants like Paul Axelrod (Dean, Faculty of Education, York) hoped that universities would be able to find a way of clarifying how the liberal arts could be defended at a time when most reforms are focused on the more ‘practical’ needs of students and mantras about market-driven change.
Organizing for Change
Surprisingly, there was little discussion of the expected provincial election this spring and the prospect that opposition parties will be giving post-secondary issues a relatively prominent place in their platforms. Perhaps this was because many of the conference participants saw that much of the policy paralysis facing Canadian universities appears to be a symptom of the dysfunctional state of provincial/federal coordination. Although the federal government has created or expanded some streams of funding targeted at innovation and tax credits for individuals, it remains the case that federal government transfers to the provinces for core university funding are very ‘leaky’ because they are still bundled – through the CHST - with grants for health care. This has long been a sore point for many student and faculty lobbyists. To address problems like this CAUT President Victor Catano reminded the conference that CAUT has been lobbying for the passage of a Post-Secondary Education Act, which would bind provincial governments to fulfil core objectives in order to receive federal funding. He insisted that CAUT’s proposed PSE Act is receiving growing support from MP’s. He also pointed out that accessibility is now at the forefront of CAUT lobbying, and that CAUT would be organizing a major forum on accessibility (and core funding) in Ottawa with the CFS on April 3 of this year.
I think it is clear that we do need to ensure that national lobbying efforts around higher education can gain a better foothold in Canada. For this task, accessibility issues are probably the best lever and the most urgent concern. If this issue were to gain more concentrated national attention, it might become the best way to strengthen commitments to public higher education. It’s interesting that this was probably the most compelling and concrete proposal to emerge at a conference that was ostensibly focused on provincial-level issues.