Strikes reflect awkward realities of Ontario university finances

Posted on March 18, 2015 in Education Delivery System

TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – Even as university funding has increased significantly in Ontario over the past 15 years, part-time instructors have been left behind.
Mar 17 2015.   By: George Fallis

Graduate students who teach many of the tutorials and labs, and do much of the marking, for undergraduate courses are currently on strike at the University of Toronto and York University. The part-time instructors who teach many of the courses just recently settled.

Both the strikers and the university presidents tell the same backstory.

Universities are being squeezed. Enrolments keep growing; class sizes are going up; fewer full-time professors are being hired and universities must rely more and more on graduate students and part-time instructors. The only real solution is more money.

But are universities being squeezed? If you had been at the Ontario government cabinet table over the past 15 years, or a citizen observing the provincial budgets, you might wonder.

In fact, Ontario has made a massive commitment to university education. Operating grants for Ontario universities have been growing at almost six per cent per year (comparable to health expenditures). Most of the funding increase has been to ensure greater access: undergraduate enrolments have risen by more than 65 per cent and participation rates have increased.

We tend not to recognize this growth because it has been implemented by expanding existing institutions rather than by starting new ones. But this growth is equivalent to establishing six new universities the size of Carleton. Furthermore, the expansion was well funded: real operating grants per the equivalent of a full-time student rose slightly.

Nominal tuition rose rapidly, about 80 per cent for Arts and Science programs, over the period. Universities are funded by the tuition paid by students and operating grants from government. Therefore, real total operating revenue per student available to universities rose even more.

The increased tuition placed a burden on undergraduate students; but with the implementation of the Ontario 30-per-cent tuition rebate and other offsets, real net tuition has fallen.

Some squeeze: massive expansion, with increased real revenue per student, and a reduction in real net tuition. There is justice in the claim of our premiers over the past years that they are “the education premier.”

In addition, over this period, funding for graduate education increased dramatically. Graduate students are paid more than $40 per hour for their work as they complete their studies. And the funding for research, both from the federal and provincial governments, increased even faster than operating grants.

The awkward reality is that the past 15 years are better described as a golden age for universities.

But as every professor knows, class sizes are indeed going up, the student-to-full-time-faculty ratio is going up, and there is greater reliance on graduate students and part-time instructors. And the academic policy discussions are dominated by the need for budget cuts.

So what is going on?

Real revenue per student has been going up, using the Consumer Price Index to calculate real revenue; but costs have been going up faster than the CPI. Every year there is a gap between revenues and costs of about one to two per cent. So every year, some retiring full-time professors are not replaced and budget cuts must be made across all activities.

The really awkward reality is that salaries, especially of full-time professors, have been going up faster than the CPI. And, we professors are spending less of our time teaching at the undergraduate level, further increasing the reliance on part-time instructors. The salaries of top administrators and top professors have risen especially rapidly. The university has its own one-per-cent problem.

Presidents, professors, and graduate students are well paid. Part-time instructors not so well. And it is they who must cobble together an annual living on course-by-course contracts, often working in effect full time at a university for many years.

The compensation and contractual arrangements for part-time instructors are the squeeze point. Universities across North America are all facing the same pressure, a pressure that will shape university finances in the years ahead.

George Fallis is University Professor and Professor of Economics and Social Science at York University and author of Rethinking Higher Education: Participation, Research, and Differentiation (McGill-Queen’s University Press).

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/03/17/ontario-professors-getting-richer-as-part-time-instructors-left-behind.html >

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