Cancelled funding for satellite campuses a bad sign

So-called ‘business’ model of education means fees get passed on to students

In late October, the Ford government cancelled capital funding for three satellite campuses north and west of Toronto: in Milton, Brampton and Markham. The building of those satellite campuses had not been without controversy. At my university, Wilfrid Laurier, both the faculty association and the Ontario federation of student unions to which our student union belongs came out opposing the expansion. Both were worried that the proposed Milton campus would become a parasite, sucking resources and students from our two established campuses (in Waterloo and Brantford).

But that was not why the provincial government cancelled its funding.

On the surface, the cancellations made little sense — all three defunded expansion projects are in Conservative ridings and all had strong local support. Moreover, the municipalities and the three universities involved have argued that the area west of Toronto is “underserviced” by universities and colleges and that a growing market exists there. But the decision to cut funding had little to do with local interests, student needs or long-standing approaches to post-secondary education.

The funding to the three campuses was cut in a dramatic way, all at once and not incrementally. The government didn’t decide, as its predecessors have often done, to link funding to the universities providing programs which conformed to government priorities (such as more business or technology-related programs). Instead, the province maintained that the three campuses simply needed to make a “business case” for education, which seems to imply the building of campuses without government support.

This is an intensely worrying development for all Ontarians interested in either getting a university education or in providing one to a son or daughter. If the “business” model of education is one in which there is no provincial funding, then there is a strong probability that an Ontario “open again for business” will be one in which fees are further deregulated and subsidies to universities are reduced. The price of education in this model is passed on to the students and the universities will be expected to reduce their costs in order to make learning affordable. This is a gloomy prospect not only for students, who will be asked to pay more, but also for institutions that will be forced, under those circumstances, to deliver less for those increased tuition dollars. Additionally, as the communities victimized by the cut are about to find out, universities attract business, raise real estate values and create jobs. If the Ford government is being driven by an ideological commitment to privatization, then communities across Ontario will find out that a withdrawal of public funding means lost jobs, reduced consumer spending and a sacrifice of the kinds of innovation and investment that drive economic, scientific and intellectual growth. All Ontarians will pay for cuts to post-secondary education.