Thread by @literasyme

A quick thread: why a 10 percent cut to ON tuition fees is disastrous news.

ON universities receive the lowest level of provincial funding per-student of all Canadian universities: see p. 4 here: ocufa.on.ca/assets/2017-OC….

At the same time, tuition fee increases have been capped at 3% for years.

With government operating funding shrinking in real terms (and if adjusted for inflation, shrinking significantly every year), these tuition fee increases can barely keep up with inflation. ON universities have long been forced to cut corners and find other sources of income.

One major source, especially for bigger, internationally well-known schools: international students, whose fees are unregulated. But not all ON universities have this option.

It is also ethically questionable to fund domestic students' education by recruiting ever-growing numbers of (usually very wealthy, but also very-high-fee-paying) students from abroad. This is not how public education ought to operate.

A legislated tuition fee cut sounds like a great idea for students and their families. And if it were paired with an increase in operating funding to the universities and colleges, this would be true. It's a step that's overdue in ON, and the Liberals never took it.

But I highly doubt that the Ford government has ANY plans to increase operating funding. If they do: kudos.

If they don't, though, that means that they are massively cutting university and college budgets for next year. Planning cycles are well underway for 2019/20, and you can pretty much guarantee that every institution will have planned to increase tuition by the max 3%.

Not because universities like raising fees, but because raising fees is the only thing they can do to keep up with inflation. Universities' expenses are not fixed: they go up every year, as do everyone else's. They need more revenues, or they need to cut things.

Now, instead of 3% more tuition revenue, ON universities will have 10% less -- in other words, this is a real cut of 13% from what they will have been planning for. THIRTEEN PERCENT.

I used to run a university department. I have never heard of anyone being asked to shoulder this kind of budgetary burden. I frankly have no idea how it would be manageable.

Of course that's not a 13% cut to the entire operating budget: it's a 13% cut to domestic tuition. The last breakdown I could dig up quickly is here, on page ^: tcu.gov.on.ca/pepg/audiences…

Domestic tuition, 5 years ago, made up 36% of ON university budgets. It has since gone up.

If I remember correctly, it surpassed government funding last year and then sat at 41%. So a 13% cut to that is something like a 5.3% cut to the overall budget. Not as catastrophic, but still extraordinarily severe, especially after years of underfunding.

U of T did an analysis of how much a decrease in tuition would cost a few years ago. Based on that, a 13% cut would mean a loss of income in the region of $350 million. It is impossible for an institution of higher learning to handle that kind of cut.

Where are the savings supposed to come from? Much, much larger classes, taught be fewer instructors? No-one has the lecture halls for that. "Online learning"? Every study has shown that this is more expensive, not cheaper.

Layoffs? When faculty hiring has not at all kept pace with student numbers, and our classes are much larger than they used to be already -- and when all ON universities rely to an unethical degree on casual labour?

Don't say "presidents' and deans' salaries." That's extremely low-hanging fruit. ON is not the US. Yes, university presidents earn a lot of money. They don't earn millions. And we don't have football coaches with insane pay checks either. The savings simply aren't there.

Here's one place universities can cut quickly, if they really, really had to: student financial aid. It would be a real disaster, but that's an expenditure that could simply be removed. All it would take is the elimination of the financial hardship guarantees many schools have.

Would that be ethical? No. Would it be helpful to anyone? No. Would it make students' and their families' lives any easier? No. It would increase stress levels -- and no university would have the money to hire more mental health personnel to help with that.

Tuition fees in ON are too high. I agree. I wish they were lower. But education costs money. It's a very costly enterprise -- like health care and like public transport.

And like health care and public transport, you can't run these institutions like a company without reducing the quality of service: they aren't money-making enterprises, unless they don't serve the purpose for which they were set up: helping people.

If universities aren't properly funded by the government, students end up paying the price: either in the form of tuition fees or in the form of inferior instruction, inferior facilities, and inferior services.

So, students, please don't cheer this news of a 10% tuition fee cut. It's not good news. It'll have a direct, deleterious effect on your education, on your campuses, and on the many ways in which your universities try to assist and help you as you navigate your degree.

/Thread.

Not "/thread" -- a quick correction, and an object-lesson in late night tweeting. The U of T analysis I referred to earlier, which assumed a $27 million annual loss per percentage-point of tuition fee cuts must have referred to province-wide university funding.

The cut to U of T's own budget resulting from this policy would be in the $50 million region, not $350. Five minutes of double checking our budget would have clarified that. Apologies, dear readers. Still a disastrous cut, but not a "we'll have to shut down" loss.

But a mistake nonetheless, and one I'd rather highlight than ignore. Also worth noting: U of T can find ways of cushioning such a blow more easily than smaller, more rural schools -- and the fewer domestic students, the less severe the cut. Which further damages smaller schools.