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Budget crisis at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY–SOME INTERESTING COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME

Somewhat sensational coverage here, but it seems the cause is pretty clear:  the Ontario government cut tuition by 10% and then froze it at 2019-20 levels (and there's been significant inflation since, of course), and international enrollments have not recovered since the worst of the pandemic.   Curious to hear from knowledgeable readers about why the Ontario government did what it did, and how this is playing out elsewhere in Ontario universities, as well as at Queen's.

(Thanks to Matt Lister for the pointer to the first link.)

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11 responses to “Budget crisis at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario”

  1. EFB

    10 Ontario universities are in the red. A problem that will compound the situation is the federal government capping international student visas. There are some valid reasons for the cap (predatory private colleges using the visa system as a 'backdoor' into permanent residency for immigrants), but it's likely to negatively impact universities' ability to recruit enough international students to make up their funding deficits. I'm not advocating that solution to the problem (international students shouldn't be used as cash cows), but it is currently the only recourse universities have to stay afloat–other than reducing admin bloat but we all know they won't do that!

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  2. praymont

    In the 90s, a leaked document from an Ontario Tory cabinet minister (Snobelen, I think) mentioned a strategy of 'fabricating a crisis' in education as a precursor to introducing drastic change. Today's Ontario Tories are doing the same thing in health and education — deliberately underfunding public institutions to prep the populace for big changes (e.g., privatization or closure of public institutions).

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  3. AK

    There was no choice but to cap the numbers of international students in the province. Most of these students live in terrible conditions and are exploited by colleges/universities where they pay exorbitant tuition. It's also created a housing crisis in Ontario with significantly increased rents over the past 4-5 years.

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  4. Efb

    I agree with all of that. But I worry that basing it on numbers rather than just refusing visas for PCCs is going to seriously impact universities.

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  5. Replytofftopic

    Wow, a reader of this blog believes the scapegoating of the liberal government, since it doesn't want to hurt its donors and voters. The housing crisis in Ontario has many causes, but international students are definitely not a major reason for the lack of affordable housing. They are actually be dependent on it. Here are some of the actual causes of the housing crisis: no meaningful, high-quality social housing (you can learn about an alternative here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-housing.html); no meaningful public planning, development is completely in the hands of private investors who only want profit; an ineffective condo system which disadvantages renters; hardly any regulation of rents (which are standard in European cities); weird and outdated zoning laws, e.g. in Toronto (single-family homes in downtown are a waste of space and drive prices up; again look how European cities like Vienna are built); no taxation of capital gains on a principal residence which leads to demand being driven by homeowners who want to trade up and not by first-time buyers. But, then, it's easier to blame foreigners–except that plays in the hand of the far-right…

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  6. praymont

    "In inflation adjusted terms, Ontario colleges and universities have lost about 31% of their 'government controlled' income (i.e., provincial grants plus domestic fees) in the five years since the Ford government came to power" (Alex Usher, "State of Postsecondary Education in Canada 2023" [Sept. 6, 2023], https://higheredstrategy.com/spec-2023/). The Ontario schools scrambled to find other sources of revenue and turned increasingly to foreign-student fees, but now the federal Liberals, desperate to assume the appearance of acting on the housing crisis, have capped the number of foreign-student visas.

    Underfund universities, forbid them from raising tuition adequately, then watch as the feds limit the revenue source to which the schools are desperately clinging. The Ontario government's recommended solution is to "find efficiencies" in the system. Between provincial Tory malice and federal Liberal incompetence, it's a wonder Ontario still has any postsecondary education.

    Reply
  7. Michel Xhignesse

    It's worth noting a few things:

    1.) Queen's serves the population of the GTA (Toronto's suburbs and neighbouring areas), which are the Ford government's core constituency.

    2.) This is not the first time Queen's has been in financial trouble. It faced a huge crisis (with large attendant cuts) in 2008-09, when it purchased a prison and undertook some rather big construction projects, only to see interest rates and the cost of materials (especially concrete) rise significantly. As I recall there was another crisis sometime afterwards, though I may be misremembering.

    3.) The Ford government has already allowed one public university–Laurentian–to go bankrupt, seemingly purely so it could impose ideologically-motivated cuts (including to profitable programs). As an outside observer (though with affected family members), it sure looked like a big part of the axe the government had to grind concerned Laurentian's status as a bilingual institution serving Ontario's Francophone minority. (Though we should acknowledge that the catalyst for Laurentian's bankruptcy was catastrophic mismanagement by someone who went on to catastrophically mismanage Sudbury's hospital system).

    Queen's isn't in anything like the same kind of trouble that Laurentian was.

    As for the international student thing… I'm pretty grossed out by the federal government's decision to blame them for the housing crisis. And we shouldn't kid ourselves to that it's just private institutions which are exploiting them–quite a few publics are, too. (Except perhaps in Québec, where institutions do not get to keep the tuition international students pay.) Far too many institutions have used international student tuition as a way to pad the bottom line and make up for chronic underfunding.

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  8. canuck

    According the Canadian government's data, 579 075 student visas were granted in 2023, and a further 548 785 were granted in 2022.

    https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/90115b00-f9b8-49e8-afa3-b4cff8facaee

    So, even if the average program length for which these visas are issued is only two years, there are over 1.1 million international students in Canada, a country of 40 million. That's a pretty big proportion! Limiting these numbers is probably past due, but as other commenters have noted, international tuition is a big part of current funding models.

    Reply
  9. Brian Leiter

    Those are a lot of student visas! The U.S. issued just under 400,000 student visas in 2023, which I believe is a high. Of course, the U.S. is nearly nine times the size of Canada in total population.

    Reply
  10. Johnny Eh MacDonald

    The system, like that in certain other countries, is a scam. It rips off international students just to keep the domestic educational institutions afloat. (Some "institutions" are worse than others, of course, such as the literal scam colleges that operate empty office floors, which really function just to provide international folks with student visas so they can enter and stay in the country.) Just as in the US, there are too many institutions for too few students. Keep in mind Canada's university/college distinction as well.

    The professoriate will look to blame anyone but themselves (never questioning whether their jobs really are that valuable, that important, even if there are 10+ other BETTER departments/faculties/scholars doing what you do in the country)–though the admin bloat is of course real (and pernicious) too. Pick your preferred political colour team to hate, bandy about the term "neo-liberalism", and pretend as though the underlying problems aren't the real ones.

    Let half of the unis go under and close the fake colleges. Send more domestic students to–how sad that it must be so qualified, REAL–technical colleges and into the trades. Stop treating the country like a fire sale. (100 million Canucks by 2100–at all costs?)

    https://universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/international-students-as-problems-and-solutions/

    Reply
  11. Brad

    Johnny
    I do not not think the provincial governments should be closing public universities. I grew up in a rural area where one had to leave home to go to a university. I know many people like myself. You cannot reasonably expect young people in many parts of northern Ontario, for example, to pursue a university education in Toronto, or the other places where the better universities are located. They may want to be closer to home, or they may not want to move to a city that has more than 5,000 times the people of the community they grew up in (I grew up in a community of 250 people). Public university education has to be accessible. And the accessibility is not merely in terms of public support – Canada is a big country, and distances are real barriers.

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