Ontario to announce details of billion-dollar boost to colleges and universities today

Ontario’s colleges and universities are set to get a billion-dollar funding boost from the Ford government.

Post-secondary Minister Jill Dunlop will make the announcement Monday afternoon at Queen’s Park. Premier Doug Ford said Friday it would be “fabulous” news.

Details of the new money, as first reported in the Star, include $903 million over three years, plus additional funds for student mental health and safety.

A government source, speaking confidentially, told the Star the money will be targeted at the schools with the greatest need.

However, the funds are about half of what colleges and universities expected, based on recommendations from an expert panel set up by the province.

“The institutions with the highest need will be eligible to receive a portion of that funding that meets the blue-ribbon panel recommendation,” the government source told the Star.

A year after Ford was first elected premier, he slashed tuition by 10 per cent and has frozen fees since.

 

 

That, combined with stagnant funding, inflation, unexpected COVID costs as well as salary increases due to now-unconstitutional provincial legislation, has left almost half of the province’s universities running deficits and warning of cuts to stay afloat.

On top of that, the schools are now facing the loss of some lucrative international student tuition revenue as the federal government cuts their numbers for this fall — a move that will disproportionately hit Ontario give the explosion in foreign students studying here in recent years — blaming a housing shortage and questions about the quality of some of the programs run by public and private college partnerships.

Last year, Dunlop asked a panel of experts to look at the sustainability of the post-secondary sector, and they urged an immediate 10 per cent boost in government funding, with future increases set at a minimum of two per cent a year, as well as an immediate tuition bump of five per cent this fall.

 

 

In total, its recommendations came with an estimated price tag of $2.5 billion over three years for the province’s 24 publicly assisted colleges and 23 universities.

One secondary leader called the funding level the province is proposing “dangerous” for the sector.

Ford has already said there will be no tuition fee increase for the next school year.

 

This article was reported by The Star