Undergraduate students are substantially subsidizing professional faculties at U of T, according to a new report by the University of Toronto Faculty Association. The report argues that out of the 19 academic divisions at U of T, those with more undergraduate students contribute significant portions of their budgets to support divisions like medicine, music, and graduate institutes.
In 2007 the university implemented a new budget model in order to encourage each academic division to increase its revenue and minimize waste.
The new model also set up a central fund called the University Fund, which “taxed” each division about nine per cent of its revenue. The fund is meant to ensure a smooth transition from the old budget process and to provide university officials with flexibility to fund priority areas.
The report looks at the contributions each academic division has provided to the University Fund since 2006-07, when it was introduced, and identifies clear winners and losers.
“This is a completely usual phenomenon,” said VP and provost Cheryl Misak, U of T’s chief budget and academic officer. “If you hold your academic values dear, then you send money from one part of the university to others so you maintain a robust, excellent university.”
Student leaders had similar comments. “The reality is that for some programs, the combination of tuition and government grants that we receive is simply insufficient to run the program,” wrote Ryan Campbell, an engineering student representing full-time undergraduates on Governing Council, in an email. Campbell called the report “old news.”
“The Faculty of Arts and Science is a cash cow,” said Gavin Nowlan, the president of the Arts and Science Students’ Union. “Those sorts of high-volume, low-cost classes [like first-year English and history classes] allow the university the freedom to have more seminar-based classes in other faculties and in Arts and Science as well.”
“Sitting in meetings with the provost and other budget officers at the university, you realize these people are really scrambling,” Nowlan said.
Uneven Allocations
George Luste, UTFA president and author of the report, said that these responses did not get at the heart of his point. “The report does not argue that within every single department revenue should equal expenses,” he said. “So maybe Music will never be fully self-supporting and we may decide as a university that we need a good music department and everybody has to chip in to make it so.”
Luste said the report was largely prompted by faculty members from some of the underfunded divisions complaining about teaching very difficult classes with insufficient TA support.
In 2009-10, the University Fund collected around $47 million, out of a total expense budget of $733 million for all 19 divisions, according to the report. The six undergraduate-heavy divisions lost about 10 per cent of their funding to the University Fund, while the other 13 divisions received allocations amounting to about 20 per cent of their total expenses. “There are some other divisions where I wonder if things are not aligned a little bit,” said Luste.
“Every division would like more money,” said Misak. “When I have my budget meetings with the big undergraduate divisions we talk about what kind of adjustments will be made and they argue that I should adjust in their favour every year.” UTSC principal Franco Vaccarino and UTM principal Ian Orchard did not respond to requests for interviews.
Luste said he wanted the report to encourage debate instead of acting as political ammunition. “I hope students have a constructive, enlightened debate about this and not make a political mantra or too simplistic an issue out of it,” he said. “I come from experimental physics, where it’s your duty and obligation to try and understand a problem before proposing a solution. For that you need good, energetic debate.”
