Opinion: Why Ontario universities must rethink their education model

The Ontario university sector is in trouble. Most universities are running a deficit, many unsustainably. As a UW Senator, I’ve had a front-row seat to our budget woes. Last year, UW ran a $43 million deficit and this year we are projected to run a $50 million deficit. These figures get even larger without expense reductions.

Why is this happening? The simple answer is to say that universities are being underfunded by the province of Ontario — and that’s true. But let’s dig deeper. In a time when we prioritize fiscal solutions for today’s budget problems, let’s be different by re-evaluating the educational model itself. Consider that there may be reasons why we are being underfunded: promises to a generation of students that haven’t been kept, and universities that are beginning to look like factories. Higher education in Ontario needs to change to meet the demands of tomorrow.

First, let’s understand how we came into the province’s unenviable chokehold. Some of you will know that domestic tuition rates (tuition that Ontarians pay) have been frozen at reduced levels since 2019. This should be great for students and it has been presented that way, but it’s not. Lower tuition rates need to be matched by higher provincial funding, but that hasn’t happened. Universities have had to deliver the same programs with less resources. 

The province has also limited the natural growth of universities by limiting the number of domestic students that receive provincial grants. Bear with me. For every Ontarian that attends an Ontario university, the university receives a grant from the province on top of the student’s tuition. To prevent unhealthy enrollment increases, the province caps the number of grants that it gives based on a target number of students. The problem is that these caps haven’t been re-negotiated since 2019. Universities are growing without the necessary funds. 

The final wildcard in all of this is international students. International tuition is not restricted, so universities can charge whatever they want. In effect, it’s more lucrative for a university to enroll international students than domestic students. For example, a Canadian citizen pays $9,000 for first-year tuition in the Faculty of Science, whereas an international student pays $53,000 for the same education. With that in mind, universities began to enroll more international students to balance their budgets and fund growth. Unfortunately, some institutions took it too far. Conestoga College increased its enrollment of international students by 1,579 per cent from 2015 to 2022 culminating in a $250 million budget surplus in 2024. This year, the federal government responded by capping international student enrollments at 473,000 study permits, down from 1 million in 2023, removing one of the last levers  universities had to balance their budgets. This is how we have arrived at our present situation.

It would be easy to look at this and blame the province of Ontario. While they are the ones who aren’t funding us enough, we should take the opportunity to look at ourselves too. Why are we being neglected? What value do we add to society, and how can we increase that value?

Let’s be honest, an undergraduate degree is worth less than it used to be. In fact, its value is continually decreasing. A bachelor’s degree used to be a direct step to employment. It is now much less the case, especially in the humanities and even the sciences. Universities, in effect, made a social contract with prospective students and their parents that if they attend university, they will be much more likely to get a job. That social contract is deteriorating. More and more graduates are not seeing the results of their investment in post-secondary education. Recent Statistics Canada data shows that only 49 per cent of Ontario graduates with an undergraduate degree work in a job that is closely related to their field within three years after graduating.

Link: Statistique du Quebec

Why has the value of a degree decreased? One reason is that so many more people go to university, saturating the market. While in some ways this is a good thing, I also fear that it’s partially the result of a dangerous and faulty idea: if you’re smart, you go to university. We have this conception that university is the natural step after high school and that anything else is a step down in quality. We need to eradicate this idea – to reflect the truth and for the good of society. There are different ways of being intelligent and many ways to contribute meaningfully to society. To that end, here’s a controversial opinion: too many people go to university. I think that a lot of students would be happier and reap greater benefits if they didn’t go to university.

I recently re-connected with an upper-year friend who was studying an Arts degree at UW. I was interested to hear that he had recently dropped out of university to happily pursue a career in the trades. He found it rewarding to work with his hands. He also remarked that he began to enjoy reading again since he could do it for enjoyment instead of being compelled to meet deadlines. This is not to mention his financial situation, which is vastly improved.

It’s important to mention here that there is a significant market for skilled tradespeople in Ontario. These are lucrative jobs, not second-class ones. In fact, with advancements in AI and other technologies, the sectors truly at risk for job loss are white-collar jobs. Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning Machine Learning researcher and “Godfather of AI,” went on record to say that if his kids were young today, he would recommend that they work in the trades and other practical jobs. All this to say, attending university is the default, and I’m not sure that it should be.

Moreover, this idea that universities are the best place to go after high school has allowed universities to become very money focused. In some ways, they are becoming factories. Part of the response to recent budget shortfalls is a concerted effort to increase enrollment even further. My home faculty, the faculty of science, has decreased how selective they are with admissions  where possible, so that they can enroll more students and make more money. Increasingly, if you apply with an average above the minimum, you get an offer. This is not an isolated trend. Many programs across the province are doing this. Nowadays, universities take in as many students as they can, get them through their courses, and send them on their way. Students are the customers, universities are selling degrees. This is not how it’s meant to be.

Let’s get down to the classroom level. I speak as a science and arts (psychology) student when I say we need to move beyond PowerPoints and multiple-choice tests. In my first two years as a student, there was only one course where I was required to read research papers. The only course that I’ve been required to write an essay worth more than 20 per cent of my final grade was a communications course. Last I checked, critical thought and original thinking happen when you ask questions, synthesize ideas, read widely, and are expected to come up with new perspectives, not answer multiple choice questions about memorized content. It could just be the corner of the university that I’ve been in or my stage of studies, I don’t know, but we need to return to a higher standard of education. One where students are not customers but scholars. 

Some may read my thoughts as a proposal to go back to a time when higher education was reserved for a select few but it is quite the opposite. We have the opportunity in this era to do something extraordinary: educate the world. With the advent of digital platforms like LEARN, universities have the capacity to launch online credentials allowing virtually anyone to learn at a university level. Lifelong learning can become a reality in a world that increasingly offers high-quality online courses. This also increases the potential for job-relevant credentials. More employers are supporting their employees’ education with many of these schemes running in a hybrid or online format.

I close by saying that I have the best interest of UW and the university sector at large in mind. The future is a time when learning and knowledge sharing will be very different from what they are now. Being able to memorize facts will not cut it. We have the opportunity now to get ahead of the curve by changing our undergraduate education to involve more creativity and critical thinking. Fortunately, UW has done well at offering opportunities for practical application through opportunities like co-op, research opportunities, externships, Velocity, and WatSPEED; and has the potential to continue leading in this way for years to come. As for our finances, governments will come and go. It’s universities that must evolve to stay relevant. How would you like to see universities change? If you want to act, consider talking to your elected student representatives, responding to surveys, and looking for leadership opportunities. Universities will change by how students treat their own education. 

Disclaimer: Jordan Bauman is a third year psychology student and a member of the University of Waterloo Board of Governors. Here, he speaks as an independent student.