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Randall Denley: Ontario finally gets serious about making universities and colleges work for the province

The new approach makes universities and colleges more serious about what programs serve the market while making students pay for the benefit

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The Ontario government’s new commitment of $6.4 billion over four years to help its financially beleaguered colleges and universities is certainly an improvement over its previous policy of starving the sector for money and hoping it would all work out in the end.

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That was the simplistic approach taken by the Doug Ford government in 2018, when it cut tuition fees by 10 per cent, then froze them. That left universities unable to recoup rising costs. The government responded with small, temporary amounts of money.

Randall Denley: Ontario finally gets serious about making universities and colleges work for the province Back to video

Now, in 2026, the Ford government is finally taking the advice of its own 2023 blue-ribbon panel on post-secondary financial sustainability by increasing operating grants and tuition fees. Better late than never, the new Ontario plan is a smart piece of public policy. If offers a far more balanced approach, acknowledging that the government, the universities and the students all have a role to play in making the sector financially healthy again.

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The big achievement is shifting more of the cost of education to students, the people who benefit most. It’s a fundamental change that’s long overdue. Tuition covers only one-third of the cost of a university education.

Premier Doug Ford’s government has finally worked up the nerve to thaw its tuition freeze, if ever so slightly. The government will allow tuition increases of two per cent for each of the next three years, then limit it to the lesser of two per cent or the rate of inflation after that. It will take five years of those increases for tuition to creep back to what it was in 2018. Not exactly a big blow to students.

The other change that affects students is more controversial, but also necessary. Ontario has a generous student-assistance plan, providing up to 85 per cent of student aid as grants, not loans, for students with low incomes. That split is wildly out of sync with other provinces.

The government says that a reduction in federal support for student grants and an anticipated increase in demand would have pushed the Ontario grant program cost up by $2.3 billion in the next school year. To prevent that, the program is being changed to 75 per cent loans and 25 per cent grants, which puts Ontario in the middle of the pack nationally.

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The change removes that $2.3-billion cost pressure and allows the government to spend the money more productively by supporting colleges and universities, but that’s not the only purpose of the change.

Compelling students to share a larger portion of the cost of their education is meant to make them carefully consider their educational choices and the careers to which they might lead. Changing the split between free money and repayable loans is a tool to help achieve that.

As Ford rather bluntly put it this week, “You have to invest in your future, into in-demand jobs, because a lot of the students, you’re picking basket-weaving courses, and there’s not too many baskets being sold out there. Go into health care, go into trades, go into jobs of the future. Focus on STEM — science, technology, engineering and math. Those are where the jobs are.”

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The government’s message to universities and colleges is similar. While the new provincial support is substantial, it’s far short of what the colleges and universities sought, more than $2 billion next school year alone.

The government expects colleges and universities to keep finding efficiencies, which would include paring away programs that have little attachment to the job market and low student interest.

There are encouraging signs that students understand the concept. The Council of Ontario Universities says that since 2020, applications for STEM courses are up 30 per cent and health care is up 93 per cent.

The new Ontario approach encourages universities and colleges to offer training the economy needs by increasing student support substantially for programs such as engineering and welding. It’s a big piece of the new money, $3.3 billion over four years compared to just $1.1 billion in base funding.

In all, the Ford government’s revamped post-secondary approach asks more of students and universities while ensuring that public money is spent productively.

It’s politically astute, too. University tuition fees are a sensitive matter because tuition costs affect so many families. That’s why the Ford government froze them in the first place. The two per cent tuition increases are the least that could have been done and even that has provoked some criticism.

By nature, Ford doesn’t like to increase the price of anything, but the reality is that costs still go up. His new approach on post-secondary is a win for rationality.

randalldenley1@gmail.com

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