Across Ontario, universities are struggling to cope with the spectre of operating deficits without compromising their academic missions.
With our main sources of public funding having been constrained for years, it’s a battle that gets harder every day, and too many schools have already tipped into deficit.
McMaster University, where I have both the honour and responsibility of serving as chair of the board of governors, has so far been able to stay above water, but it’s becoming much more difficult to do so within the limited means currently available.
On one hand, the demand for quality university education is at its highest point ever, with about 500,000 full-time students enrolled in Ontario universities, more than double the number in 2000.
Offering high-quality programs for top-tier students is critical to McMaster’s ability not only to sustain itself, but more importantly, to be able to serve and improve life in Hamilton and across Ontario, Canada and the world.
Our community of students, faculty and staff at McMaster numbers more than 40,000. The university is one of the largest employers in Hamilton and region. Its total economic clout is more than $9 billion annually.
Hamilton’s health-care systems are important partners in McMaster’s education and research missions. McMaster students — at all levels — receive valuable training in their hospitals and clinics, and in turn our students and graduates provide much-needed care to patients.
Similarly, McMaster students serve the community through internships, research and volunteer work, assisting people in need, planting trees and monitoring pollution, to name a few examples. As our students progress and graduate, they help the community grow and prosper. McMaster graduates have one of the highest placement rates among Canadian universities.
The education that our students need and deserve, made possible by the work of educators, researchers, administrators and staff, is today at serious risk.
The provincial operating grants that fund a significant proportion of every university’s day-to-day activities have stalled for 15 years, during which inflation has eroded their value by more than 30 per cent. The Ontario government reduced tuition by 10 per cent in 2019, and has capped it at that level ever since, clamping off universities’ other main source of funding.
Like other universities, McMaster has worked hard to withstand these reductions while preserving the quality of the education it provides, which sees it rank consistently among Canada’s leading universities and among the top 100 in the world.
Despite prudent fiscal management throughout the institution, though, the wear is beginning to show.
The gap between the revenue and expenditure lines on our financial charts is growing wider, and without some relief, we can no longer cover it without pulling back somewhere and risking the tradition we have spent 137 years building.
Like many public universities, we have invited some of the most highly qualified international students to study at McMaster. They pay significantly higher tuition than domestic students, because provincial government support does not extend to international students. The effect has been very positive, not just financially but culturally and materially, because the students we select are high achievers who enrich our campus while they are here and go on to great success after graduating.
The federal government recently announced a broad cap on international students, covering the entire post-secondary sector, including universities, public and private colleges.
The proportion of international students at McMaster — roughly one in six — is reasonable and balanced, and having them here also gives us the resources to provide more opportunities to domestic students.
The university guarantees housing for all first-year international students to avoid contributing to the broader housing shortage.
As they work out the details of how and precisely where international enrolment will be limited, we urge authorities to consider the true value international students bring to McMaster, and the region, together with how responsibly McMaster’s leaders are balancing and working proactively with all the considerations at play.
Similarly, we hope the Ontario government will adopt the recent recommendations of the blue-ribbon panel on post-secondary finances by raising the operating grants it provides and allowing tuition to keep up with inflation.
Restoring a sustainable, predictable and workable flow of funding would make it possible for McMaster and other Ontario universities to return to focusing only on excellence in education and research and not survival.
