Ontario PSE is great: Minister

Province is funding 'every student and more'

By Chris Bentley, Ontario Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities
The Hamilton Spectator
(Jun 19, 2007)
Re: 'More students, less funding' (June 15)

Let me congratulate faculty, staff and administration at McMaster for their work. McMaster is an excellent post-secondary institution, delivering world-class education at both the graduate and undergraduate level.

I understand the challenges budgets present, and frustrations that may result in the process. I know many of these are the result of operating funding that did not increase from 1991-2003, even though the number of students did. This funding pays for faculty, staff, libraries and equipment.

McMaster's operating funding went down more than 2 per cent over those years, which included one year, 1996, when funding of all colleges and universities was cut 20 per cent.

Times have changed. Premier Dalton McGuinty recognized the need for more funding at our post-secondary institutions, and acted. Between 2002-03 and 2006-07, four years, McMaster's operating funding increased by more than $60 million to $183 million, a 54 per cent increase in four years. This doesn't include capital funding, nor $13 million provided to McMaster from this year's provincial budget to alleviate immediate cost pressures. I understand the number of students taught increased, over the same period, by 32 per cent, substantially less than the budget increase. We are funding every student, and more. In presenting McMaster's budget challenges, the much larger contribution by the people of Ontario to education at McMaster over the past four years should be recognized.

The number of students McMaster takes is up to McMaster, not the Ontario government. McMaster would have received more operating money even if it had not taken additional students. Our government is providing operating funding for every student, and is also paying for many spaces created by universities under the previous government that were never supported by government funding, as the funding increases indicate. Is there more to do? Yes. But substantial progress has been made in the past four years. We will continue to ask the people of Ontario to support our students, and institutions they attend, with funding they need to succeed.

http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1182227244625&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1112876262536