Dr. Paul Kershaw is a policy professor at the University of British Columbia and founder of Generation Squeeze, Canada’s leading voice for generational fairness. He offers policy advice to governments of all party stripes, including the current federal cabinet.
Student struggles with unaffordable housing, rising food-bank use and debt are tell-tale signs that the university sector must improve its advocacy.
To improve finances for postsecondary students, advocacy groups such as Universities Canada and U15 (which represents our country’s big research universities) must make bolder requests of the federal budget, as should individual universities of their provincial governments.
Yet the latest budget submission from Universities Canada did not contain a specific funding request to shore up the sector. This is a mistake, because it precludes university advocates from contrasting the small size of their financial asks relative to new investments made in other programs.
Presently, these groups ask for table-scraps from treasuries. They should take cues from retirement income programs and medical care, which consume the bulk of new government spending. More ambitious advocacy from the postsecondary sector must start now, as Ottawa reduces the number of international students who can be recruited to pay high tuition to backfill for revenue shortfalls.
In research from 2020, I showed that the number of Canadians over age 64 increased by about four million between 1976 and 2016. Governments adapted to that demographic shift by increasing yearly spending on retirement income and medical care by $39-billion, after adjusting for economic growth.
Over the same period, the number of young people getting postsecondary degrees rose by 4.6 million. But governments only added $3-billion per year in postsecondary spending.
In the years since, the postsecondary sector continued to receive the short end of the funding stick. For example, this year’s federal budget reports a $5-billion-increase for it spread between 2022 and 2028. By comparison, Old Age Security will receive an extra $110-billion, and the Canada Health Transfer will gain $70-billion.
Of real concern is the fact that the postsecondary sector got a lot of what it asked for in the 2024 budget. Over five years, U15 requested a 50-per-cent increase in money for the research granting agencies that fund a lot of student stipends; budget 2024 delivered 30 per cent. Universities asked for a 50-per-cent increase to Canada Student Grants; the federal budget delivered 40.
Sure, the U15 submission did include some other financial requests, and sector leaders may quibble about the math Ottawa uses to calculate its postsecondary increases. But when you get a big chunk of what you are asking for, and it remains tiny by comparison with the gains won by other sectors, you are not asking for enough.
Beyond Ottawa, provincial governments are deeply implicated in failing to fund postsecondary education, especially in Ontario.
By 2026, the Ford government plans to spend $90-billion a year on medical care. That’s $38-billion more than a decade earlier (not accounting for inflation). By contrast, the postsecondary sector gained just $5-billion in extra spending a year, leaving it with $2-billion less in annual spending than the cost of servicing the Ontario debt.
The same is true for B.C., where annual medical spending will rise $18-billion between 2016 and 2026. Postsecondary will receive $4-billion.
I make these comparisons between postsecondary and medical care because health science is clear. Medical care accounts for less than a quarter of what makes us healthy. Our jobs, earnings and housing are more important for shaping our health. Access to postsecondary education paves the way toward improving all of these social determinants of wellbeing.
While being a student is never going to be a rich period in one’s life, economic precarity should not be the price required to get a degree in this country.
It wasn’t nearly so economically challenging to be a university student when I attended between 1993 and 2002. Back then, when I walked through the Student Union Building, ads generally drew attention to the latest pub night or performance on campus. As a professor walking through campuses now, I’m frightened by the number of ads pointing students to find foodbanks, shelters and mental-health support.
To restore what has been lost, the university sector must increase its ambition to advocate on behalf of the students it serves. This should start with the expectation that postsecondary education receive a larger share of new government spending relative to medical care and retirement income.
