University funding ignored
Current election stands in stark contrast to 2012 when tuition was a major issue
“Anyone could have predicted it when they backed off the tuition increase. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for.”
ALEX USHER
The issue of university funding has become such political poison in this election campaign that no one dares mention it.
Finding the silence deafening, Quebec’s university presidents took out full-page newspaper ads recently lamenting a huge gap in per capita funding between Quebec and the rest of Canada, and trying to jump-start a dialogue.
The topic, however, continues to be avoided like the plague.
It is a sharp contrast to the campaign in 2012, on the heels of the student uprising over tuition fee increases, when university funding was the dominant issue and red squares predominated.
“The Printemps Érable was pretty recent and there is little appetite to reopen the issue,” said Michel Patry, director of HEC Montréal. “But that’s really not good for universities because our underfunding isn’t getting better.”
If anything, the financial situation for universities is becoming increasingly urgent. The cancelled tuition hike was followed by a fiveper-cent budget cut of $123 million for Quebec’s universities, which was supposed to be a two-year “short-term pain, long-term gain” plan.
Instead, with the news this year that the cut is a permanent measure, the pain became long-term.
There won’t be any tuition increase to offset the cuts — all the parties have committed to maintaining the small indexation increase implemented by the PQ after they came to power, which helped soothe the smouldering student population after months of conflict.
The rectors’ ad highlighted “the critical issue no one is talking about,” namely that Quebec universities have $5,000 a year less to spend per student than other Canadian universities.
Sure, the Parti Québécois has vowed to boost funding, with a promised $1.8 billion of reinvestment by 2019 and $262 million pledged for 201415.
But several university presidents who spoke with The Gazette this week said their 2014-15 budgets are shaping up to be marginally down again.
Concordia University president Alan Shepard said despite the reinvestment for the coming year, the university’s budget looks like it will be down by about one per cent. Michael Goldbloom, principal of Bishop’s University, said his school is falling short in revenue again, too.
“It’s disingenuous of the government to cut budgets and then say they’re reinvesting,” said Goldbloom. “We’re not getting money from the government, we didn’t get it from a tuition increase, and now we’re facing a very serious problem.”
And he is “deeply disappointed” that universities have been such a non-issue in this election campaign.
“No one has said anything, there’s no commitment to universities from the parties, we are just expected to continue to do more with less,” Goldbloom said in an interview. “We have gone from higher education being a total fixation of Quebec society to being a taboo topic.”
The silence about universities is worrisome, said Max Roy, president of the Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d’université. “The university community did a lot of work on financing and management after the Summit on Higher Education, and we are worried it will all be for nothing. It seems we have been forgotten.”
Tier ry Morel-Laforce, president of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, believes that after the student mobilization of 2012 “no one wants to go back to that subject.” However, he’s perturbed about the position publicized by the university leaders.
FEUQ does not buy into their argument that universities here are significantly underfunded and he worries that they’re raising the exact same issue that precipitated the conflict over tuition fees two years ago.
“What concerns me is where they want to go with that position because, last time, it led to raising tuition fees,” said Morel-Laforce.
Universities in Quebec are facing some tough years, said Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, a consultancy based in Toronto specializing in higher education. He believes they’re facing cuts of six to eight per cent during the next three years.
“That’s huge when you can’t make it up with tuition,” he said. “Anyone could have predicted it when they backed off the tuition increase. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for.”
And he doesn’t believe it matters which party gets in on April 7.
“The amount of money they’re talking about (for higher education) cannot be any different. There’s no money. I’ve followed the campaign and they’re not talking about budgets for the health sector, either,” he said.
Perhaps the Liberals will be a little more sympathetic to universities than the PQ, which he believes is “actually hostile to the sector.”
But he cautions that the Liberals may remember that, in their hour of need, the universities “were absolutely silent” during the tuition uprising.
“They’re going to reap that now,” said Usher. “The universities will ask for something and the Liberals may say hey, we tried to do something for you guys two years ago, but you wouldn’t help us out.”