STUDENTS PAY THE PRICE FOR PROVINCIAL FUNDING CUTS
Things at U of O are getting worse. I’ve certainly noticed it and you probably have too.
There’s a general feeling that the uncaring, out-of-touch, stingy administration of our university is just letting everything fall apart while they laugh from their ivory tower.
However, a look through the 2023-24 university budget paints a somewhat different picture, showing that the administration is very much aware of the declining quality of education and services. Page 13 of the budget identifies six key areas that lack adequate funding: (1) indirect costs related to research; (2) bilingualism; (3) support for students with disabilities or special needs; (4) mental health; (5) anti-racism and efforts to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion; and (6) maintenance and replacement of capital and IT infrastructure.
Sounds about right! But if the university is aware of these issues, why do they continue to persist, year after year? The answer lies in Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s cuts to postsecondary education. In 2019, the Ford government announced a 10 per cent cut to tuition rates for Ontario students, and has frozen those rates ever since.
This sounds like a win for students, but the province never made up the funding that universities lost in tuition revenues. And yet, operating costs have increased at record rates during the past few years of high inflation.
If universities are expected to pay for a consistent quality of education and services, the money has to come from somewhere — a reality that our ‘fiscally responsible’ government continues to ignore.
If in-province tuition had increased with inflation every year since the 2016-17 school year, Ontario students would now be paying an additional $884 every semester. That $884, multiplied by thousands of full-time students, constitutes a lot of missing revenue for the university. Since the province has refused to replace that funding, the university has patched the budget hole with a combination of huge increases to out-of-province and international tuition, and cuts to scholarships and services. As a result, U of O students suffer.
Between a lack of mental health resources, worsening building facilities, expanding service wait times, increasing class sizes, replacing full-time profs with part-timers, and increasing tuition, students are paying more for less.
Of course, we shouldn’t let the U of O administration off the hook. There is no shortage of examples of the administration demonstrating how out of touch it can be with regard to the concerns of students. Look no further than University President Jacques Frémont’s generic and insensitive responses to racism in classrooms and the suicide epidemic on campus.
But most problems at the U of O are not rooted in bad management or misallocation of money. The truth is, there just isn’t enough money to go around. And only the province can fix that.
The next opportunity to vote out this anti-student government is on June 4, 2026. Don’t stay home — your education depends on it.
