University Finance in Ontario. Research Monographs in Higher Education, Number 5

This study was an attempt to examine and discuss university finance issues in Ontario, Canada, within the broader context of higher education policy and to present data on trends and the impact of recent changes on Ontario universities. Multiple sources of data were used for the analyses. Higher education policy in Ontario has become increasingly viewed as a subset of provincial economic policy rather than a component of social policy or broad educational policy. Major policy initiatives for higher education seem to have become component parts of macro-level (cabinet-level) approaches to economic development. Ontario is characterized by limited capacity or organizational responsibility for policy development on the part of the government ministry responsible for postsecondary education, and Ontario appears to lack a systematic approach to higher education policy. Tuition fees in Ontario are among the highest in the country, and recent government policies have divided academic programs into those with fee levels regulated by the government and another category in which the institution has much greater discretion in establishing fees. There is some evidence that students are beginning to consider costs, rather than the academic reputation of the university, when they choose a university. In Ontario, privatization of universities sometimes means the transformation of a publicly funded program to a self-funding program, and it sometimes refers to the establishment of new institutions to provide greater access to education. Allocations from the province's SuperBuild fund suggest that the government expects public institutions to accommodate the expansion of student demand in Canada and that the government is encouraging the restructuring of existing public institutions. An appendix contains a glossary. (Contains 7 graphs, 5 tables, and 150 references.) (SLD)