Funding Cuts Erode Quality At Ontario Colleges While Premium on Educated, Skilled Workforce High: Study by York U. Centre for Research on Work & Society

TORONTO, November 15, 1999 -- Voices from the Classroom: The Ontario Colleges and the Question of Quality, a new study released today by York University's Centre for Research on Work and Society (CRWS), shows that while staff at Ontario's 24 colleges has the capability and commitment to produce well-educated and trained graduates, its ability to deliver this service has been steadily eroded by funding cuts over the past decade.

Dr. Jerry P. White, author of the study, CRWS research associate, and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario, said that while the shift in public resources away from an area often reflects an accompanying change in public interest, in the case of education, quite the reverse is true. "Strong public demand for college education has been spurred by a very strong public belief that the return for education at the personal level is relatively high," said White. He notes further that increased educational attainment does have an effect on relative earnings, though the data on that is only partially conclusive.

The study, a university-based project funded by the CRWS, York University, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, provides data on the forces at work in shaping changes at the colleges over the last five to 10 years. Its findings rely on an in-depth stratified random sample interview survey of 517 college professors, plus documentary data from relevant government departments, annual reports of the 24 colleges, and interviews. The report highlights the impact of a 21 per-cent cut in provincial funding from 1992 to 1998 and the accompanying spending cuts at the colleges, which occurred during a period of steady enrolment increases -- in 1991-92 and 1995-96, enrolments increased more than 9 per cent. Students, says the report, are paying a larger proportion of actual costs.

Among the report's findings:

56.5 per cent of College teachers surveyed reported a decrease in contact time with students outside the classroom. 34 per cent saw little change.

71 per cent reported a decline in quality of the curriculum covered due to the reduced number of weeks per course. 26 per cent reported no effect on quality.

College teachers reported a shift in emphasis toward "self-learning", or what is referred to as self-taught classes, where students work independently. 89 per cent said their programs were affected by this shift. Of those, 61.6 per cent said the shift had hurt the quality of their programs.

Nearly half the faculty said they use fewer essays and assignments because there is simply no time to grade the work.

Nearly 65 per cent of college teachers said they have seen a serious decline in the quality of academic work produced by college students.

88 per cent of respondents across all disciplines reported an increase in the workload of an average work week.

More than 78 per cent of faculty noted that their level of stress had increased, and more than 86 per cent reported a decline in morale at their college.

Almost 81 per cent reported that the practice of employing fewer full-time contractually protected professors and more substitutes, such as instructors and technicians, had negatively affected the quality of education at their college.

CRWS Director Dr. Carla Lipsig-MummÈ said that these research findings clearly have public policy implications: "At a time when a nation's economic performance is increasingly determined by the education of its citizens, Ontario's decline in investment in education does not bode well for the future of hundreds of thousands of young Ontarians and the economic health of the province," she said.

The report states that there are fewer college employees, including teachers, than 10 years ago, receiving a lower gross compensation package, while student numbers have risen. "This trend has translated into larger class size and fewer services available to students, while students are paying more for their education," the report states.

White concludes that unless the sector is refinanced, the general decline in the quality of a college education in the 1990s will continue. The impact of decreased investment and increased enrolment, says White, is felt by students in the classroom, by college professors in terms of stress, and by declining morale, and will be felt by the province as the colleges become unable to deliver well-trained graduates to the workforce. "All indications are that the colleges are going to experience a dramatic and sustained pressure to admit the coming population bulge and double cohort of high school graduates due to the phasing-out of grade 13, and this will only worsen the current situation," said White.

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For further information, please contact:

Carla Lipsig-MummÈ
Director, CRWS
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 30205

Jerry P. White
Dept. of Sociology
University of Western Ontario
(519) 661-2111, ext. 5142

Susan Bigelow
Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22091
YU/123/99