"The Future of Ontario Universities: Challenges and Opportunities" was the theme of a well attended conference held in Toronto on January 17, 2003. The conference was sponsored by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), but it reached out to more than just university faculty. Speakers and participants included also university administrators, representatives of student organizations and public interest groups, and professional analysts and media personalities. Perhaps the only significant voice not heard was that of the Ontario government, which declined to present its particular vision of our universities. Queen's was well represented both among the panelists and in the audience; Richard Greenfield and Elaine Berman attended on behalf of QUFA. In view of the obvious importance and interest of this theme to QUFA Members, we have prepared the following report to share some of the information and viewpoints that emerged from the conference.

According to a poll of 1,000 Ontarians commissioned by OCUFA for this conference, the public has grown increasingly anxious over the past year about the availability of Post-Secondary education: 77% of those interviewed in January 2003 were concerned that their children would not be able to attend a publicly funded university in Ontario, while 72% were specifically worried that there has been inadequate preparation for the double cohort (up from 55% in March 2002). Concerns among those with families, especially those with children hoping to go to university in the next few years, were even more marked: 81% gave the Conservatives a "C" grade or lower on their performance in relation to post-secondary education, while 22% gave them an "F" (the latter figure has doubled since last year). As this clearly shows, people do not think the government is doing any better under the current Premier than under his predecessor. Among all those surveyed (not just those with families), 84% believe that it would become more important to have a degree over the next decade but, at the same time, 73% believe that post-secondary education is likely to become so expensive that most Canadians will be unable to afford to attend university. The key message presented to the conference by the pollsters was: "Post-secondary education is perceived as increasingly important but Ontarians seem to be worried that it may become the privilege of the rich."

In the past, the conference was told, Canadians have assumed that students with average academic backgrounds would be able both to find and to afford a place at university. Now, however, there is a growing assumption that universities will be more and more the preserve of both an academic elite (if high school grades really do define such a group), and of a moneyed elite. Something fundamental to our society has been changed but we have never formally, publicly decided that this should be so. How did it happen?

A succession of governments has chosen to follow economic policies of reducing debt without raising, and indeed while significantly reducing, taxes. The consequences have been dire for the whole public sector, and in post-secondary education the long decline in government funding has now intersected with a dramatic rise in demand. In the decade 1991-2001, government funding of universities' operating costs across Canada dropped from 68% to 53%. Increasingly desperate, universities have been pressured to develop alternative revenue streams, such as alumni support and corporate funding, even though these come at considerable cost in initial investment (hence the quip "advancement eats what it kills"), and with a considerable risk to academic integrity. The most far-reaching consequence of this change in government policy, however, is surely the heavy burden imposed on students. There has been an overall increase in tuition of 135% over the past decade across Canada (during which time the cost of living has increased by less than 21%), and in Ontario the cost of an Arts and Science BA has risen by 240% since 1985-86. The government has introduced programs like the Canada Education Savings Plan and the Canada Millennium Scholarship Fund to alleviate the burden on students, but analysis shows that the former program has been of benefit principally to children from higher income families, and the latter provides assistance to only one in fourteen post-secondary students.

In consequence, even when they are academically competitive, more and more children from lower and middle-income backgrounds are being scared away from university by the prospect of crippling debts. And among those who are brave enough to take on the challenge, many are deterred from following their choice of career by the expense of education in deregulated fields. Opportunity, in other words, is being determined by affordability. Clearly, there are serious ethical issues here, but, as a number of speakers pointed out, there are also dangerous practical and social implications. To cite one of the most striking: students who wish to become doctors, dentists, and lawyers may graduate with debts of over $100K. As this encourages them to follow the most lucrative specializations, we risk ending up with a plethora of plastic surgeons and corporate lawyers and a shortage of GPs and public interest lawyers. A future in which students from low and middle income families are deterred from attending university, in which the professions become the preserve of those from well-to-do backgrounds, surely represents an enormous social deficit, a criminal waste of potential within our society.

Panelist after panelist spoke of the need to make university more affordable and so more accessible. Given the diversity of the speakers, there was, however, no consensus on how this funding should be provided or on how accessibility should be increased. For example, there was discussion of the merits of using enhanced loan programs to reassure students worried about debt and to help those already forced to incur heavy debts. Some advocated opening higher education up to non-traditional and private institutions as a partial solution to the problem of access. Interestingly, de-regulation of tuition received little consideration as a practical or long-term solution to the financial woes of the universities. Less surprisingly, perhaps, the most insistent call was for increased government funding, above all in the form of base operating budgets. The most eloquent expression of this view actually came from Paul Davenport, an economist who is currently President of the University of Western Ontario and formerly President of the University of Alberta. He argued that the 30% reduction in public funding of universities since 1980 has not been inevitable, as some government supporters and some university presidents have tried to suggest, and he contrasted funding practices in Ontario with those in the United States, where public money has been put into public universities. Unequivocally denying that raising tuition is the solution, Davenport called for adequate public funding, funding that would keep up with inflation, provide adequate operating budgets, meet growing demand for both graduate and undergraduate programs, maintain physical plants, and address problems of skyrocketing student debt.

The issue of quality was inextricably linked to that of accessibility and affordability in the panel discussions. The loss of government funding, the search for new sources of revenue, and the growth in student demand have all brought with them serious threats to the quality of the education offered in Ontario's universities. Declining revenues and growing student numbers have pushed student/faculty ratios up by 25% since 1987/88. In this same period these ratios have risen much more steeply than they have in the US. More than 1000 faculty positions have been lost over the past decade, a decline of about 8%, and one third of Ontario's current faculty are set to retire by 2010.

From the student perspective too, the conference was told, most key indicators of quality have declined. Class sizes have risen, meaningful contact with professors has diminished, machine scored multiple choice exams have begun to replace research papers even in the humanities, basic equipment has become outdated or in poor supply, computing facilities have failed to keep pace with demand, library resources have shrunk, guidance and remedial programs have stagnated, non-academic facilities have become overstrained, and more and more students are crammed into unsuitable accommodation each year. In other words, a general malaise across the province's universities is evident to all concerned, from administrators to students. The future looks bleak and clearly no one is being dazzled by the language of quality adopted by the government and echoed by some university administrations. As the President of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, Joshua Morgan, pointed out, claims of improved quality are very useful in staking out territory, as a rationale for fee increases, as a way of pretending to meet the expectations of what are increasingly being seen as the 'customers'. And this notion of the student as customer, along with the increased reliance on corporate and private funding brings its own special threats to quality and integrity: if the customer is always right surely she or he should receive the evaluation he or she expects; if 'he who pays the piper calls the tune' then there may be little place for independent standards or for even for that most precious quality of all, academic freedom.

Most of the speakers at this conference stressed that it was important to be re simply negative about the future of our universities. We must attempt to find solutions to the problems that currently face us, no matter how daunting they may seem. What, as one put it, do you do after you finish 'awfulizing'?

For the panelists of every stripe the answer lay unquestionably in obtaining more funding. But if the key to a healthy future for our universities is indeed increased funding, we need to ensure that this funding is not only found, but found on terms that do not threaten the goals of the universities, that do not prevent the universities from playing the part assigned to them in our understanding of a good society. Unfortunately the university community, driven by necessity and the effects of government ideology, has become divided over the proper source of that funding. Federal and Provincial government, students, and private and corporate donors are all seen as having a role to play, but in what proportions and in what combinations?

In fact, a struggle is currently taking place between two quite distinct views of the role Ontario's universities should play in our society and hence of their future: One believes that a university education is of real value only to the individual who receives it. As a result those who hold to this view are quite willing to see university learning become the preserve of a small elite determined to an extent by extraordinary (real or inflated) academic ability but certainly by extraordinary wealth. The other believes that the university education received by each individual enriches society as a whole. Those of this opinion thus demand that university learning be made available to as many as are able and willing to pursue it, irrespective of wealth or background.

Ultimately the issue of where funding should come from boils down to philosophical views of the nature and purpose of society--- one in which the 'good' of the parts is seen to be necessarily derived from the 'good' of the whole, or one in which the 'good' of the whole is seen to derive simply from the 'good' of the parts. This is a problem which lies at the root of almost all political debate, however it may be elaborated, but in this context it is perhaps worth remembering that our present university system (the one in which most university teachers and administrators were trained themselves) developed in an era which believed that education, at all levels, was a public good, a benefit to the quality of life not just of the individuals who pursued it but of the community at large. If that assumption is eroded and education is seen merely as a commodity which benefits the individual, we must realise that we are moving down a path which seeks to minimize the value of society and of community to the individuals within it. By reforming the higher education system in this way we are taking steps that will be almost impossible to reverse, we are undermining the fabric of society as it was built by our forebears in Canada. If that is the way we wish to go then we must decide to do so openly and explicitly, not stumble or be led into it unawares and without thought.

If we are to demand more public funding for our universities we should be clear, and it should be made abundantly clear to the tax paying public of Ontario, that the university education every student receives ultimately benefits the whole of society and improves the quality of life for all of us in innumerable ways, including health care, education, administration, and culture. It should be equally clear that if the individualist, elitist, privatized view of the university is allowed to impose itself, it is society as a whole that will be the loser.