March 9, 2001

Canada has endorsed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads in part:

"Everyone has the right to education. . . . [and] higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit."

All Canadian universities are dealing with the consequences of massive and chronic under-funding from both provincial and federal governments, and the situation in Ontario is particularly severe. Queen’s has responded by deregulating tuition in the graduate and professional schools (medicine, law and applied science) and by seeking to deregulate tuition in the Faculty of Arts and Science. Currently non-professional, undergraduate program tuition increases are capped by the Ontario government at 2%, and it is not clear how Queen’s would remove this restriction. One approach would be to become less reliant on public funding. Also in response to under-funding, Principal Leggett has recently presented a vision of Queen’s as a more private university using American institutions such as Princeton and Stanford, as models.

Following a referendum in the Faculty of Arts and Science in which 91% of the voting students in a record turnout, expressed their opposition to the recent deregulation initiative, the Principal has indicated that deregulation per se is off the table, at least for the moment. Instead, the Board of Trustees and Senate have been asked to consider what Queen’s, ideally, should be in terms of "quality," independent of its current resources and structure. The next phase will be to decide what economic strategies are necessary to realize this ideal. Given the Principal’s vision of Queen’s as a quasi-American private university, we are concerned about this process. QUFA is concerned that deregulation has merely been hidden from debate, only to resurface when there are no apparent alternatives: i.e., when it is appears to be a necessary and inevitable step in achieving the dream of privatized, Americanized, Queen’s "quality." QUFA is also concerned that more profound issues, such as the role and necessity of public education in the kind of democracy Canada has historically chosen to be, are also hidden from debate, and will be ruled permanently out of play once "inevitability" is firmly in place. QUFA is concerned that a body of select student and faculty will be used to represent us all as serious changes to the University are made. Related to this is the issue of accessibility.

This document will provide a brief summary of the proposed changes. Then it will raise philosophical issues regarding the privatization of university education in Canada. And, since privatization means deregulation of tuition, it will address deregulation in detail.

Principal Leggett‘s vision for Queen’s has appeared in several forums. His "Queen’s at the Crossroads" appeared in the Fall volume of the Queen’s Alumni Review¹, he was interviewed on the topic of innovation in university management in Policy Options², and he has reprised the themes of these publications in the Queen’s Gazette³ and The Queen’s University Journal⁴. His vision focuses largely on the necessity for Queen’s to excel at this crucial juncture in Canadian education. He cites Queen’s reputation for garnering the "best and the brightest" of Canada’s post-secondary students, and calls for a movement beyond national boundaries and competition at an international level: Queen’s must "take its place among the world’s truly great universities." And in order to do this, "our dependence on government funding and our vulnerability to the vagaries of public sector support must be reduced."⁵

The Principal then cites Princeton and Stanford as role models for the new Queen’s: "Both are mid-sized institutions of unquestionable quality, deeply committed to excellence in both teaching and scholarship, and to the primacy of the individual." It is clear that this would involve building a foundation of private and corporate funds to deliver an American-style post-secondary programme that, it is hoped, will compete with the likes of Princeton and Stanford. The Principal recognizes the challenge this represents as he acknowledges that, although Queen’s endowment fund of $335 million is the highest in Canada among universities with a similar operating budget, "it falls short of the top 150 endowments in North America, and is less than four percent than that of Princeton or Stanford."⁶ The enormous gap between typical Canadian university endowments and Princeton’s was made very clear recently, when the American university announced that it was going to direct $6 million (US) of its $8 billion (US) endowment to student scholarships.⁷

The Principal is also proposing a two-tiered university system in Ontario: "In my ideal world, each institution in the system would be free…. Some might chose to serve local needs and keep tuition low…. Others may aspire to international levels of excellence and adjust tuition… to levels consistent with that vision."⁸ The end result would be the division of universities and their respective students into the haves and the have nots. Those who could not afford to go to the high-priced universities would have to settle on the lower-priced ones. The "international" universities would be better resourced, compounding the division between the haves and the have nots, on the level of both individuals and institutions.

At stake is the principle of public education. Historically, public education has been one of the fundamental tools of democracy: a means for people to alter their social and economic status and thus to enable a democratic society to fulfill its fundamental promise of empowering individuals and equalizing differences. Canada in particular has embraced this principle by establishing a university system that is public rather than mixed or tiered as in the United States. It also, until recently, has kept tuition costs minimal and affordable (especially with student aid and loans) for virtually every Canadian.

Aside from the philosophical issues involved, there is a serious ethical concern involving the use of public spending. The Principal’s plan relies on taking public monies paid by Ontario taxpayers as base funding for university operations at Queen’s. But raising tuition to US private university levels will make it impossible for much of the public to attend Queen’s. The Principal is not refusing public money, he is relying on it to provide the basis upon which, with the additional income generated by high tuition, the University can be self-directing, including in the matter of accessibility.

It is a matter of common sense that privatization means further tuition deregulation. It is also clear that recent attempts to deregulate tuition in Arts and Science are tied to the vision of Queen’s as an American-style private university. Deregulation is unacceptable for a number of reasons.

A Betrayal of Commitments

For one thing, deregulation would negate much of a document recently approved by the Queen’s University Senate. Entitled "Accessible Education for Citizens and Leaders in a Global Society of the 21^st Century: A Statement of Principles, Proposed Policies, and Recommendations for Tuition at Queens" (February 17, 2000; amended March 30, 2000), the document contains the following statements:

Given the dramatic increases in tuition and in student debt, Queen’s views tuition increases as a last recourse within the partnership paradigm, involving a democratic process based on values and principles. During the tuition decision making process, Queen’s commits itself to demonstrating that it has made all efforts at alternative resource generation.

Queen’s recognizes that maintaining tuition levels is the primary means of addressing accessibility and diversity. The Queen’s community seeks the most equitable means to meet the challenge of budget restraints due to government underfunding and remains committed to the partnership paradigm.

Queen’s recognizes that keeping tuition levels down is necessary for maintaining the nature of our publicly funded post-secondary education system and that increasing tuition levels will only minimize the government’s financial obligations.

Affordability/Accessibility

Obviously, deregulation has serious implications in terms of the affordability and accessibility of education at Queen’s and, by extension, elsewhere. In Ontario, between 1989 and 1998 tuition doubled. As a result of the 60% increase in tuition fees since 1995 and declining provincial student assistance, the average debt load of a graduating undergraduate student is now $20,000. For students who are parents this cost is usually compounded by having to borrow for childcare expenses, etc. Moreover, the cost of education has become such that the student loan system is increasingly unable to support the needs of students in university, even when they are borrowing to the maximum. In other words, it is increasingly impossible for students to afford the university experience either during or after matriculation.⁹

This is reflected in enrolment trends. According to Statistics Canada,¹⁰ full-time university enrolment has leveled off in the 1990’s, ending a long-term pattern of increases. Part-time enrolments have fared worse, falling significantly in the 1990’s. It is also reflected, as will become clear below, in a widening enrolment gap in terms of student socio-economic status. Financial assistance, whether from OSAP or from individual institutions, to mitigate the effects of tuition hikes have not substantially improved accessibility, and has given rise to "debt aversion" on the part of many would-be students.

The Queen’s administration has supported deregulation without demonstrating any substantive knowledge of what the effects might be on access. This is not surprising given the fact that, as Ross Finnie of the Queen's School of Policy Studies has recently shown, the collection of data throughout Canada fails to fully address problems of access.¹¹ For instance, Statistics Canada fails to account for how the fear of debt, especially for those from low socio-economic backgrounds, prevents potentially excellent scholars from even applying to university.

Other groups have begun to take a close look at access from a variety of perspectives. In a study from Guelph,¹² a correlation was found between parents’ socio-economic status and University enrolment. While in 1987, 52% of entering students came from a background where parents had only a high school education, this figure shrank to 27% by 1998. A study from Waterloo¹³ determines that between 1991 and 1998 the proportion of students from low income backgrounds dropped by 8.6% provincially and 14.2% at Waterloo. The most startling results come from the University of Western Ontario, in a Spring 1999 survey of medical students.¹⁴ Fees for the medical programme were deregulated at the start of the 1998-99 academic year and rose from $3,500 to $10,000. Of the 80 first-year students who responded (an 83.3% response rate), 24.4% reported family incomes in excess of $200,000, while just 7.7% reported family incomes of less than $40,000. This was in stark contrast to fourth-year students, who had entered prior to deregulation. For the latter group (response rate of 86.6%) only 8.6% reported family incomes in excess of $200,000, while 17.3% reported family incomes of less than $40,000.

In terms of undergraduate students, Guelph is an interesting comparator for Queen’s because, as the authors of the Guelph study point out, Guelph (like Queen’s) is a residential university, where costs are higher due to its location and the need for students to come to Guelph to live. This contrasts with commuter universities such as York, McMaster, Ottawa, and Toronto where more students can attend from home and where part time work opportunities are more plentiful. Taking this into account, the authors reveal that, "Low-income non-registrants were nearly three times more likely, at 33%, to attend a university that was not their first choice, if the cost of attending was lower, compared with 12% of low-income students who attended Guelph".

Finally, rising tuition costs will affect the quality and equality of education for many who are not initially deterred from coming to Queen’s. More people will have to work, or work longer hours, outside school, seriously affecting their academic performance. They will have a grossly inferior experience than those who come to Queen’s with the means to study without having to support themselves during the academic year. All the above places the Queen’s administration’s argument re "Queen's quality" in an interesting light. What will be the quality of the Queen’s student body if, as has happened in the medical faculty at the University of Western Ontario, virtually an entire segment of the student spectrum --meritorious, creative, bright students whose families do not earn $40,000 or more--disappears from the scene? And what will be the quality of student performance if many who do make it to Queen's can enjoy only a drastically compromised academic experience caused by the economic pressures of staying in school?

THE COUNCIL OF ONTARIO UNIVERSITIES AND GOVERNMENT UNDERFUNDING

In support of deregulation and a vision of Queen's as an American-style university, the argument has been made that Ontario universities and, in particular, the Council of Ontario Universities (COU), have lobbied intensely and consistently and have done all that they could to resolve the problem of university under-funding politically. This is highly debatable. Historically, instead of acting as a unified front in the face of government cutbacks, certain universities within COU have formed blocs that have lobbied against the interests of other universities. Starting ten or so years ago, the stronger and more powerful universities, Queen’s included, sought to separate themselves out as "research intensive" institutions and grab for a bigger piece of a diminishing pie. (The long term effects of this have been devastating on smaller, teaching-oriented institutions such as Trent.) Blocs have also formed in relation to issues such as targeted funding as universities have jockeyed for position to make the most out of their own relation to government, rather than fight for the Ontario university system as a whole.

Moreover, Ontario universities have failed individually and collectively to respond to the fact that public support is necessary to sway publicly elected officials to change public policy. The universities and COU have not in the past ten years launched any kind of public campaign such as those launched by teachers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, insurance brokers, unions, and a whole host of other interest groups, each of which has successfully changed seemingly intransigent government positions.

Were Queen’s and COU to wage and win the political and public battle in terms of post-secondary education, Queen’s would stand a far better chance of preserving and enhancing its reputation and the quality of its education than it would by seeking to obtain private funding at the level of a Stanford or Princeton, both of which amassed considerable endowments over many years. The restoration of adequate public funding and, especially, of a true government commitment to public education would provide stability and ongoing support that the mere stopgap measure of tuition increases cannot. The latter must inevitably reach a ceiling, and quite quickly. (Even more quickly for some universities than for others.) Having renounced claims to genuine and adequate government support, universities that have come to rely on tuition would again be in crisis, and this time terminally.

CONCLUSION

On virtually every ground -- philosophical, financial, political-- the pursuit of deregulation and an American model of private education at Queen's is ill-founded. It would confer upon future Queen’s students a heavy, and for some, unbearable debt sentence. More broadly, in so far as privatization constitutes a move against public post-secondary education and against the right of every qualified Canadian to a university education of his or her choice, support of privatization would constitute a betrayal of the next generation of high school graduates and a betrayal, in many respects, of Canada’s future.

This motion passed by the QUFA Executive at its February 6, 2001 meeting will be on the agenda of QUFA’s Council of Representatives meeting March 13, 2001 for further consideration and support. If you have an opinion on this issue, please contact your representative on Council to let your views be known.

MOTION:  Please Refer to Approved Motion from the April 24, 2001 Annual General Meeting

Given that,

1.     Undergraduates in Ontario now carry, on average, a $20,000 debt at graduation while graduates carry debts of $50,000 and up (in the professional programme these figures are much higher);

2.     Accessibility studies reveal declines of up to 9% throughout Ontario between 1991-1998 in enrolment of students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and it has been demonstrated that nothing even close to an adequate study of the full implications of rising tuition costs in Canada has been made;

3.     Tuition increases have been used to meet shortfalls in public funding so that fees as a share of Canadian university operating revenues have increased from 11.6% in 1981 to 26.7% in 1999 and at Queens the increase is from 15% (1981) to 28.2% (1999);

4.    In a referendum of Queen's Arts and Science Students (Fall, 2000), 91% students in a record turnout opposed tuition deregulation;

5.    QUFA has endorsed the Queen's Senate document "Accessible Education for Citizens and Leaders in a Global Society of the 21st Century," (March 30, 2000);

6.     Canada endorses the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads in part: "Everyone has the right to education... [and] higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit."

7.    To move Queen's with its (CAN) $350 million endowment towards an American model of a private university with an endowment of (US) $8 billion is unfeasible,

It is moved that QUFA supports Queen's status as a publicly-funded university that shall be accessible to all students motivated and talented enough to enroll in any of the University's programmes,

That QUFA oppose any initiative, including the further privatization of Queen's academic programmes and additional deregulation of tuition, that would lead to increased economic burdens placed on students, and to a further decline in accessibility in terms of both entry and retention of students,

That accessibility be defined in terms of affordability, without unmanageable debt for students independent of socio-economic background, and

That any studies of accessibility must include factors such as those linked to class, race and gender that prevent potential students from even considering Queen’s.

¹ Leggett, William "Queen’s at the Crossroads," Queen’s Alumni Review September/October, 2000.

² "The freedom to innovate..."

³ "Reflections on the future of Queen’s," Queen’s Gazette, Oct. 9, 2000.

⁴ "Principal Leggett’s reply to the Queen’s Journal’s Editorial ("De-Leggettization"), Oct. 17, 2000.

⁵ "Queen’s at the Crossroads,"

⁶ ibid.

⁷ "Princeton to replace loans with student scholarships, "The New York Times, January 28, 2001.

⁸ William Watson, "The Freedom to Innovate: An interview with William Leggett," Policy Options (Sept. 2000): 16.

⁹ OCUFA, Less Isn’t More: Ontario’s Faculty Shortage Crisis. Research report of the Ontario Conferation of University FacultyAssociations, 1(4), January 2001.

¹⁰ Statistics Canada, catalogue no. 81-003.

¹¹ Finnie, Ross ""Student Loans - Empirical Evidence" C.D. Howe Commentary, Second Draft" Policy Studies, Queen’s University, January 11, 2001.

¹² Quirke, L. Gilbert, S. and McMillan, I. "Social class, finances and changes in University attendance. A two-tiered effect at Ontario Universities?" University of Guelph, 2000.

¹³ "The University of Waterloo Federation of Students Accessibility Study," Waterloo Federation of Students in conjunction with The University of Waterloo Office of Institutional Planning and Analysis." University of Waterloo, 1999.

¹⁴ Delice A. Sim, "Report of the 1999 survey of Medical Students, Telephone Suvey Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario, 1999.

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Last revised: March 24, 2004
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