The Ontario government released a revised tuition framework last week, setting new guidelines on how much universities can raise annual tuition rates.
For the next four years, colleges and universities in Ontario may increase tuition by three per cent each year (one percent more than inflation), down from five percent under the previous framework.
The provincial government also hinted it would potentially act against controversial flat or ‘program’ fee structures, such as those implemented at the University of Toronto. Flat fees were a major controversy during president-designate Meric Gertler’s term as dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science.
“We reached what I think it a very positive outcome for students,” said mpp Brad Duguid, Ontario Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, “Moving away from the current tuition framework and reducing it significantly will save the average undergraduate at U of T and other places approximately $1,200 over the course of the framework.”
“This is not going to be easy for our universities and colleges,” admitted the minister. “It is a significant amount less revenue they’ll be taking in in the next four years from students, and I think it will be my job and their job to work to find ways to meet these costs and challenges without affecting the quality of education provided.”
The chair of the Council of Ontario Universities, Alastair Summerlee, sees the framework as a reasonable middle ground. “On the one hand, there was really strong pressure from various groups to freeze tuition, and on the other, a genuine need for universities to have money to be able to continue to provide the kind of quality of education that we think important, and a government working with a major deficit and not being able to fund universities even as much as they would like to, so a compromise all around.”
“It’s very important that we got a multi-year agreement,” added Summerlee, emphasizing the stability afforded by such a framework. “This will allow universities to start saying ‘Right, we don’t have as much money as we want. How do we plan to continue to provide the kind of education we need but without necessarily as many resources,’ so, fundamentally, it will actually provide a reassurance that we can do the best possible to provide quality education.
“I think it demonstrated that this government in particular is very good at listening to all the communities involved, that it came up with a compromise that is a reasonable one. I don’t think anybody will look too kindly at the outcome, but we’re all in a position that we can say we influenced the way the government thought.”
Minister Duguid cited discussion as a key emphasis for his administration in crafting the new framework: “We met extensively with student leaders, and all my post-secondary stakeholders at universities. I had discussions with leaders of post-secondary institutions and their representative organizations.”
The administrations of Ontario’s post-secondary institutions were indeed actively involved in the discussion leading up to the implementation of the new framework. “The government has engaged very seriously with us,” said Summerlee, “and in the end, the presidents of Ontario’s colleges and universities collected together and wrote a document which we then all signed to support moving in the direction of the three per cent.”
“It just wasn’t a decision colleges and universities were hoping for,” said Duguid. “But, as I said early on, we’re seeing the system through the eyes of the students, and I believe we’ve reached a threshold of the days when we could give students five per cent increases on an annual basis, so we had to make some changes.”
Sarah King, chair of the Canadian Federation of Students—Ontario (CFS-O), disagreed. “We previously had many meetings with the ministry to express students’ position on the need not to increase tuition fees,” she said, “Unfortunately, as you can see, the Liberals did not listen to that call to reduce tuition fees and decided to continue to increase tuition fees, albeit at a lower rate.”
King went on to detail the recommendations for the new tuition framework submitted by the CFS-O to the provincial government in February: “Students were calling for a 30 per cent reduction in tuition fees over the next three years,” she said, with a 15 per cent reduction in the first year to be funded at “no new costs to the government” by re-allocating the Ontario Tuition Grant tax credit.
“This was not the approach that the Liberals have taken,” said King. “They’ve decided to continue to increase tuition fees at a rate of three to eight per cent, depending on program. By the end of this, this three- to four-year tuition framework will have seen, under the Liberals, since 2006, increases of up to 108 per cent.”
Even though they were at odds on the tuition framework, the CFS-O and Duguid both seem reasonably optimistic about their prospects for cooperation moving forward.
“What we are looking forward to is the fact that the government has expressed interest in moving forward in a lot of issues surrounding ancillary fees, tuition fee billing, and even flat fees, which is a really big issue at the University of Toronto specifically,” King noted.
“We’ve heard from students about what they regard to be unfairness with regard to the application of deferral fees and also the timing of tuition payments being aligned with osap deadlines,” said Duguid.
“At the same time, we’re going to enter into discussions this summer with our post-secondary leaders on changing the current rules with regard to flat charges. That’s something U of T students have an interest in, and we can plan to move on that by the 2015 school year.”
Per-student funding for post-secondary education in Ontario is the lowest of any province in Canada, while tuition for undergraduate and graduate students is the highest. Citizens of Ontario owe the provincial government $2.64 billion in student debt, up from $1.15 billion in 2005.
