The Ontario government has recently announced that colleges and universities across the province will be being hit with tuition freezes as well as receiving an additional budget of $1.3-billion.
This comes as the Federal government recently introduced an admission cap for international students, now limiting the number that colleges and universities may admit year-to-year.
“I didn’t believe they were going to take such drastic steps,” says President of Fanshawe College, Peter Devlin.
“There’s still a large bias in support of university education.”
Doug Ford and the provincial government are pushing both the tuition freeze and the budget increase as a way for colleges and universities to recuperate some of the losses coming from the recent changes.
“It’s never been more important to keep costs down for students and parents,” says Minister of Colleges and Universities, Jill Dunlop.
“Instead of burdening hard-working families with higher tuition, we’re making historic investments to stabilize colleges and universities. We’re taking action to make fees more transparent.”
Dunlop’s press conference to make the announcement was met with controversy though as the minister was met with various questions from reporters, largely focused around the lack of more funding.
Ontario’s Blue-Ribbon Panel recommended that the province inject over $2.5 billion in ongoing base funding into the province’s educational institutions, nearly double what the Ontario government decided to give out.
“Today’s announcement, while providing short-term relief, falls far short of what the government’s own expert panel found was urgently required,” says President and CEO of the Council of Ontario Universities, Steve Orsini.
“Ontario’s universities now face an eight-year long tuition freeze without adequate multi-year base funding, which continues to undermine the financial sustainability of the sector.”
Orsini goes on to say that a lack of funding is not a new issue for Ontario institutions, adding that colleges and universities in the province continue to be one of the lowest funded.
“Ontario universities receive the lowest per-student funding in Canada and are only funded at 57 per cent of the national average,” says Orsini.
“The 10 per cent tuition cut in 2019 and ongoing freeze, declining real per-student operating funding and the more than $345-million impact this year in repealing Bill 124, are further placing the education, programs and services students rely on at risk.”
Fanshawe currently sits as one of the top three colleges and universities in the province that are set to be affected when it comes to the number of accepted international students on an annual basis. This also includes Conestoga and Niagara College.
Conestoga has the largest number, sitting at over 30-thousand international students, followed by Fanshawe with nearly 12-thousand, and Niagara sitting at over 11-thousand.
Despite this, Devlin says that much of the problem stems from a lack of support from the Ontario government.
“I’m disappointed that the minister chose a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel to deal with the problem of bad actors and housing,” says President of Fanshawe College, Peter Devlin.
“Tools were available, including the allocation of study visas to quality schools like Fanshawe, and having institutions provide a letter of attestation for individual international students.”
The province has yet to disclose how the $1.3-billion in funding will be divided amongst universities, but experts estimate that it will only provide institutions up to 25 per cent relief for the losses seen in the loss of international student admissions.
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