On January 18, roughly 300 people congregated on the lawn of the Ontario Legislative Building to protest the changes to university funding and student assistance announced earlier in the week by the Ford government. These changes include a flat ten percent reduction in the cost of tuition. Among the changes are the elimination of OSAP grants for anyone whose family income is above 140,000 dollars per year, the elimination of free tuition for low–income students, the end of the six–month interest–free period after graduation, and a move to make some student fees optional.
Merrilee Fullerton, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, justified the tuition cuts on January 17, stating: “The previous government believed in handing out OSAP money to some of Ontario’s highest income earners with virtually no meaningful criteria for success. It is no surprise that student enrolment has remained flat while tuition rates skyrocketed. Instead of using OSAP to indirectly subsidize future rounds of tuition hikes, we will focus our resources on the families in greatest need while challenging our partners in the postsecondary sector to deliver better value for the high tuitions they already charge.”
These sudden changes to tuition and student assistance caught UofT and the Canadian Federation of Students off guard. A source within the university confirmed that UofT was not consulted about these changes prior to the announcement made by Minister Fullerton. Additionally, the chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students Ontario, Nour Alideeb, stated in an interview with The Strand that the organization has been unable to schedule a meeting with the provincial government since Premier Ford was elected in June.
After the announcement, UofT president Meric Gertler released a statement saying, “We need to review our budgets to assess the full impact of these changes. But we remain committed to fulfilling our academic mission and to supporting excellence in research and innovation. We will do all we can to limit the impact of these changes on the UofT community.”
However, it remains to be seen if a budget shortfall could be made up. To understand more about how these cuts will affect the school, The Strand reached out to Dr. Holger Syme, an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga and a former department head who has managed budgets within the university. According to Dr. Syme, there are relatively few tools for revenue generation at such a late stage. One solution might be to raise fees for international students; however, as the average student fee for the Faculty of Arts and Science was increased by nine percent for the 2018 to 2019 year, the university would be need to be careful to avoid pricing itself out of a competitive marketplace.
Ultimately, it looks as though cuts are inevitable. Some may occur through attrition, in which retiring staff are not replaced at the same rate as new staff are hired, or retiring staff may be replaced by contract workers and graduate lecturers. According to Dr. Syme, “It’s up to the President and the Provost to decide how the burden will be shared. I suspect it’s going to be distributed among the divisions, perhaps proportionately, perhaps weighted in some way to ensure that our teaching mission will not be too severely affected.”
One big question that remains is the allocation of what Dr. Syme called the “University Fund,” which he defined as: “the pool of money into which all divisions pay around ten percent” of their tuition fees. The pool is then redistributed, with some divisions receiving more than they put in. With the Ford cuts affecting some of the largest contributors to the fund, it remains to be seen how or if the Fund will be redistributed as well as who it will hurt.
Right now, the only thing that is certain is the uncertainty for students and faculty, and of what comes next.
Disclosure: Alex Byrne-Krzycki has previously worked for the Ontario Legislature
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