Ford Government passing the buck on university funding – students, workers and economy will pay the price

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Ontario government made a funding announcement today that will continue deep staff cuts, rising tuition fees and increased student debt.

“The minister was long on scapegoating, but short on funding. Ontario has the worst university funding in Canada, and he’s passing the blame for his own cuts to other levels of government, and passing more and more of the costs onto the students, who are already graduating with record debt loads,” said Fred Hahn, president of CUPE Ontario.

The funding announcement fails to catch up even with recommendations of the government’s hand-picked “Blue Ribbon Panel,” and does not make up for years of stagnant funding. In fact, today’s announcement will still leave post-secondary education $1.5 billion below what it was in 2018, once adjusted for inflation and student population.

Also concerning is the government’s ongoing pigeonholing of funding into job-specific training and not into areas that improve critical thought and advance basic research.

“It’s easy to say that funding engineering and tech job training is useful. But it ignores the reality that pure scientific research, the arts and many other fields actually drive most of the advances in our society and economy. We need proper funding for public universities and colleges, not more money funnelled into the pockets of people setting up dodgy private colleges,” said Colleen Ferrera, chair of CUPE Ontario’s university workers committee.

Per student, university funding for Ontario universities remains the lowest in Canada, by a wide margin.

With OSAP focusing more on loans than grants, it is also offloading more costs to students.

Underfunding led to widespread layoffs this year, including 50 percent of courses taught by contract instructors at some universities and a staggering announcement of a 30 percent cut to administrative staff at one university earlier this week.

CUPE represents more than 40,000 academic, administrative and blue-collar workers at universities across the province.

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