The future looks bleak. U of T president David Naylor’s grand ambitions in his Towards 2030 plan, will steer the university towards an Ivy League model. If all goes according to Naylor’s plan, by 2030 the university will be a research-focused institution that relies on endowments, gouges students on tuition and cuts undergrad enrolment.
The plan recognizes that the province is shortchanging universities. Ontario remains the province with the lowest per capita post-secondary education funding—largely a result of massive cutbacks during the Mike Harris days. Naylor would have the university master its fiscal woes by jacking up tuition and lobbying for more corporate cash.
The university, it seems, has given up on affordable higher education. To justify the fee increases, Towards 2030 cites the 50 per cent of university students who leave U of T debt-free. It’s hardly a healthy goal to leave the rest of the graduating population in debt. The focus should be on those that do leave debt-ridden, and on the people who never make it to the university because they fall through the gaps in the financial aid system.
So far, Naylor has refused to join students and community in a combined appeal to the province for increased funding. It’s because students want lower tuition fees, and the president won’t have it.
Governing Council will pass the proposal on October 23, no questions asked. GC’s subsidiary committees—Planning & Budget Committee and Academic Board—have already accepted Towards 2030. GC will refuse to consider concerns of the U of T Faculty Association and student unions: that increased fees and corporate involvement will further compromise university accessibility and integrity.
Did anybody bother to ask the student body or the faculty what they think of the plan? It’s clear that this document serves corporate interests—and corporations have plenty of representatives who get to vote on Thursday. The U of T community has everything to lose—but with a few easy strokes, a powerful few will quash the needs of 70,000 stakeholders. The token eight seats given to students on a 50-member Governing Council supposedly give the student body a voice on the university’s most powerful decision-making body. Too bad the university can so easily turn a deaf ear.
