Ford must repair the mess he’s made of post-secondary

Ontario’s governing Progressive Conservatives have a problem with post-secondary education.

Five years after Doug Ford took power, the cash-flow crisis facing colleges and universities can no longer be wished away. It’s a mess of his own making.

The premier has long known it. He just didn’t know how to undo the damage he’s done.

As a newly empowered populist in 2018, Ford offered up higher education as a sacrificial lamb to placate his base. He ordered an unprecedented tuition cut of 10 per cent — leaving more money in the pockets of students (and parents), but putting colleges and universities out of pocket.

In later years, it only got worse. Tuition remained frozen at 2018 levels while inflation soared — further depleting the coffers of campuses across the province.

That’s a winning strategy for a fee-cutting politician, but a losing trajectory for higher education (disclosure: I’m a senior fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University, and at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy).

Also a no-lose strategy: Ford could claim credit for reducing tuition costs, all at the expense of campuses across Ontario — without any hit to the provincial treasury.

Yet, as even Ford has finally come to realize, you can’t reduce postsecondary revenues — followed by a freeze — forever, while soaring inflation drives costs ever higher.

Eight of 23 universities are running deficits, while others are overextended and under-enrolled. Ontario’s 24 so-called community colleges now look far beyond their local communities in search of revenues from lucrative foreign student fees to avoid a critical cash squeeze.

How to get out from the fiscal trap and populist claptrap? When in doubt, dole it out to outside experts for political cover.

The government that slashed tuition out of the blue dreamed up a “blue-ribbon” panel to rescue and resuscitate post-secondary education. Ford’s Tories asked the experts to tell them what they wanted to hear — or more precisely, what their supporters need to hear.

How can Ontario put colleges and universities back on a sustainable financial footing? Even by asking the question, the government answered it.

This week, to no one’s surprise, the advisory panel gave its inevitable advice: Cash-starved campuses need more money from both students and government.

Stop cutting back on funding. Start unfreezing fees. Shrink the shortfall.

“The sector’s financial sustainability is currently at serious risk, and it will take a concerted effort to right the ship,” it warned.

To be sure, money matters aren’t the only challenge for the province’s colleges and universities: Questions of critical thinking, civil talking and career training are also key elements of the equation.

But if you can’t pay the bills, you can’t keep the lights on. If you don’t invest at home in higher education today, you won’t compete in the global economy of tomorrow.

Can the government finally learn from its own mistakes?

The cost of doing nothing is too high. The cost of doing something is not altogether low.

Led by former Queen’s University vice-principal Alan Harrison, the outside panel recommended a onetime tuition hike of five per cent in 2024-25, followed by increases of two per cent (or higher, tied to inflation) thereafter.

That’s far less than what post-secondary institutions lost to inflation after the initial fee cut and subsequent freeze. By the panel’s calculations, it would take a tuition increase of 25 per cent to make up for lost monies.

Which is why, beyond its proposed five-per-cent tuition increase, it also calls on the Ford government to do what it has avoided doing all along: Raise its own contributions from the provincial treasury by about 10 per cent (for the per-student grants that go to each campus), with increases in subsequent years of at least two per cent (tied to inflation).

It’s a creative compromise by the blue-ribbon panel appointed by the Tory-blue government. It’s often forgotten that there’s been a double-barreled freeze — double jeopardy — of both tuition and funding grants.

Colleges and universities — especially the latter — have long been given short shrift by Tories who view professors as overpaid and underworked. The panel disputes “the frequent criticism of … how much is spent on people, notably faculty members,” noting that costs per student are higher in most other provinces.

Of course, calculating costs on a per capita basis doesn’t tell the full story. On an individual basis, are students getting value for money?

Six months ago, Colleges and Universities Minister Jill Dunlop asked the panel to propose how to make the system “financially stable.” Now she has her answer.

The minister responded to their report by repeating the government’s perennial press line about its bottom line: Before freeing up more funding and fees, she wants “post-secondary institutions to create greater efficiencies.”

Rhetoric aside, the record shows that shock therapies won’t achieve the “greater efficiencies” that the minister and most administrators want. If cutting funding were a panacea, we’d have seen the payoff by now.

There are wiser ways of encouraging colleges and universities to raise their collective game without pushing them to the brink. Rather than destabilizing revenues and depleting resources to work miracles, far better to work on campus mandates and metrics.

Thanks to a panel of its own creation, the government now has political cover to fix a crisis of its own making. All of these years later, a funding infusion is as obvious as it is overdue and unavoidable.