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Flat Fees Pass at U of T

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Photo of new students moving into residence in 2006 by David Topping.


U of T’s flat fee proposal for Arts and Science students—the one that would force new students to pay for 5.0 courses, regardless of how many courses, from 3.0–6.0, they actually took—has barreled over the final administrative hurdle at the University of Toronto, and was passed this evening by the university’s Governing Council at a meeting held at the school’s Mississauga campus.
Faculty of Art and Sciences Dean Meric Gertler warned, before the vote took place, of “romanticizing…the status quo,” explaining that the way the university works now is inefficient for both the university and its students, that change is needed, and that the flat fee would be—bafflingly—”a way of reducing the cost of education for our students,” citing students’ ability to enter the work world (or graduate school) sooner, save on preexisting yearly fixed fees, and reduce their housing costs. Gertler said that the money will be used, in part, to hire more teaching assistants, more faculty (to “reverse the erosion” of the faculty to student ratio), and will be put into “research opportunities.” Both Gertler and Provost Cheryl Misak emphasized that the university’s stated “primary goal” is to “re-invest” in students, with the university devoting $1.5 million extra to “need-based student aid.”
“We know how to do this,” Gertler explained, pointing out that the university already has some programs, like Computer Science, with a flat program fee. “This is not rocket science.”
Many of those in attendance at the meeting, however, were clearly a little less than assured of Gertler’s claims, voicing concerns over student debt, over workloads, over student involvement, over how quickly the proposal passed through administrative channels, over the none-too-impressive state of the other Ontario universities with a similar pay structure implemented, and over what they considered a drastically unfair model. (One speaker compared it to a grocery store, which couldn’t get away with selling 3.0 loaves of bread for the price of 5.0.) The Star‘s editorial about the fees, published yesterday, sided against the proposal as well, as has the Varsity, as have we.
But the motion passed in spite of the widespread opposition to it, amidst a few yelps of “shame” from those in attendance, with the only notable amendment being a reevaluation of its impact to be conducted in time for the 2011–2012 school year, before flat fees switch from affecting those students taking 4.0 or more course to those taking 3.0 or more.
The only thing stopping the fees from applying for new students as of this upcoming school year—students who will, now, be informed via e-mail about the impending change before May 28, the date by which they have to conclusively decide what school they want to attend—is the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which has a date of July 11 set for the legal action brought forward in April by student representatives against the flat fees. That action attests that an earlier amendment to the proposal, the one that offered to phase in the change over a longer period of time, did not take place properly. According to Angela Regnier, the University of Toronto Students’ Union Executive Director, “a ruling [then] could nullify any vote that takes place today.” For the flat fees to not go ahead as planned, it’d have to.
David Topping is a U of T student (who the flat fee proposal, if implemented, wouldn’t affect).

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Comments

  • http://www.newmindspace.com Kevin Bracken

    This is awful. I took 4.0 courses every year because I started school with enough transfer credits to graduate that way. Some people may be more comfortable graduating in 5 years or even 6. Blatant cash grab.

  • http://undefined Andrew

    Quite apart from the money issues, this could be yet another signal that U of T wants to move away from its large general-purpose university roots, and towards something more like Stanford and Harvard, where graduates outnumber undergraduates.

  • http://www.publicspace.ca Jonathan Goldsbie

    What was the stated reason for holding the meeting in Mississauga?

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    I’m not positive enough to say for sure, but I believe it’s been scheduled there for some time now (a PDF of meeting dates, dated March 12, says as much), and the meeting (in which they did talk about other stuff!) started with a speech by a UTM rep talking about the strength of the satellite campus, how it (and the city) will grow together, that sort of thing.

  • http://undefined jaaaaaaat

    many schools charge incredibly higher amounts of money than UT. And these schools always attract the better faculty. But you wouldnt find them in Canada.
    There must be some correlation.
    The solution: go take 5 courses. its about quantity right?
    Or maybe its about paying for an education.

  • http://undefined jw03

    This is absolutely deplorable. University education in our country is already horrifically expensive, and many students are only able to afford to go by crawling deep into debt with OSAP or private loans, and by working during the school year.
    It’s just another reason why U of T sucks.

  • http://undefined rocker

    U of T Mississauga has a dirty little secret… well, not a secret if you have a keen eye.
    Their Communication/Culture/Tech program charges almost double what comm/cult/tech programs charge at other schools, yet the program has no dedicated, full time, tenure/tenure-track professors. Mostly sessional teachers, cuz sessionals are cheap. But you’d think if students paid more than most for undergrad tuition, they’d get better profs, no?
    Recently they commissioned an external review of that program and the reviewers savaged it… and recommended at least two full time, tenure track hirings. Looks like the report is being hidden somewhere, and the students continue to pay more in tuition than they should. cheapskates.

  • http://undefined Vincent Clement

    Horrifically expensive? I guess you haven’t been to the US. If U of T sucks so bad, why do students continue to flock to it? There is plenty of competition in Ontario and Canada. No one is forcing anyone to go to U of T.

  • http://undefined Vincent Clement

    U of T has already ‘signalled’ that they want to reduce the number of undergraduates and increase the number of graduates on the St. George campus.

  • http://undefined Paul Kishimoto

    Agreed, this is pretty evident in Naylor’s latest long-term plan. It’s not signaled, but stated explicitly. I think the number of engineering undergraduates is set to peak and then decline slightly, while graduate enrolment is to grow steadily.

  • http://undefined Paul Kishimoto

    As an aerospace engineering student I love hearing, “This is not rocket science,” because I can usually volunteer, “Certainly not! Rocketry is governed only by Newtonian physics and universal gravitation, both simple concepts. This is significantly more complex—who are you to claim you’ve solved the probem?”
    As a UofT student, I have mixed feelings on this. A prominent member of the UofT Student Life department pointed out to me a couple of years ago that:

    • The percentage of secondary school graduates wanting a university education is increasing, trending past 30% in the near future.
    • The population of the GTA is increasing.
    • Neither of these trends is likely to reverse.

    Toronto’s universities and their satellite campuses are effectively full. Undergraduate enrolment only increases at the expense of graduate enrolment and of faculty-student contact (since there is no place to house extra faculty to maintain current class sizes). Ryerson’s strategy of buying out its neighbours is extremely expensive given land value in the downtown core. I cite the per-foot cost of the condos at One Bedford as a reason why UofT St. George is effectively confined to its current boundaries.
    I am a strong believer in the correlation of widely available higher education and a more enlightened society, and really disturbed by any class barrier, access to education included. However, though we have a public system—in name, at least—the balance of supply and demand still applies, and the effects are hard to ignore.
    Some greater authority—the province, I suppose—has to do some serious, beyond-the-next-election planning and consultation to decide where the next university campus is going to be, who (York, UofT, Ryerson, other) has to take care of it, where its students will live, how it will be serviced by transit, etc. I don’t know if the establishment of UOIT was an attempt to do this…if so, it was far too modest, and there’s nothing similar on the horizon.
    To try to solve this problem within UofT would be wrong. Even if the university was capable of finding the courage to unilaterally launch a fourth campus, to do so without the input of other stakeholders in the GTA would make it an ineffective action, at best.
    All this being said, I can’t see how any university administration will be persuaded to abandon fee changes that increase revenue until there are more undergraduate spaces available in the region than there are students clamoring for them.

  • http://undefined Alogon

    Interesting. Not being a university student anymore I don’t care too much but I am curious, without knowing all the details, whether this deal could pass a scan with the Consumer Protection Act, 2002. Seems this deal is one-sided in favour of the instution and not the consumer, that the consumer derives no substantial benefit from the deal and that that the price grossly exceeds the price at which similar goods or services are readily available to like consumers, i.e. other university students.
    I love it when institutions funded by the public make such undemocratic and unfair moves. Seems to fly in the face of the very ideals they espouse. I wonder what the percentages are for the “re-investment” in the students as compared to putting into research where, let’s face it, the university’s real concern is. It is all about prestige.
    As some of the commenters drew attention to, they are trying to boost grad students as opposed to undergrads. They should worry more about undergrads since that is the majority but the ivory towers have such a dim view of the “commoner”, as they are a mere necessary evil to create the few grad students that will sate their vanity. Kind of like teaching.

  • http://undefined marktbot

    Vincent, comparing ourselves to the US is such a copout. Duh, yeah education here is cheaper—everyone knows that. By making that comparison and inferring that we should shut up and be happy you’re setting the bar pretty low.
    The real question is will this proposed change increase access to higher education. I would argue that it won’t and will have a disproportionately negative effect on lower income students because they’ll be unable to take a reduced class load while working in order to pay their tuition fees. So, if you compare the old system (pay per class) to the new system (flat fees) then the old system is better.

  • http://undefined Ryan Campbell

    I’ve heard that the number of first years we’re admitting in Engineering is down by almost a third, so it’s already begun there. And yes, we did explicitly endorse shrinking the number of undergraduates on the downtown campus and focusing more on research.
    I wasn’t at the meeting myself (I’m working in Vancouver to pay my tuition), but what I heard was that Governing Council passed a watered down version of these program/flat fees that set the bar at 4.0 courses and gave it a 2 year sunset clause. I’ll know for sure minutes come out, but if that’s true then at least what passed wasn’t out of line with other faculties at UofT (Engineering has a program/flat fee with a 4.0 course threshold) or at other Universities. Not that that makes those program fees fair…

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    “I wasn’t at the meeting myself…but what I heard was that Governing Council passed a watered down version of these program/flat fees that set the bar at 4.0 courses and gave it a 2 year sunset clause. I’ll know for sure minutes come out”
    From the fifth paragraph of this article: “the motion passed…the only notable amendment being a reevaluation of its impact to be conducted in time for the 2011–2012 school year, before flat fees switch from affecting those students taking 4.0 or more course to those taking 3.0 or more.” The Star has a few more numbers, too.

  • http://undefined Ryan Campbell

    I’ve seen the article in the Star David, but that’s not exactly the story I got from a fellow governor. With due respect to yourself and the Star, I trust them more as a source than the media, which is why I’ll wait for the minutes.

  • http://undefined Ryan Campbell

    Governing Council holds one meeting a year at one of the suburban campuses. This was the one.

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    Fair enough; the minutes will surely have more detail than either the Star‘s article or mine, though I don’t think I’ve got anything wrong—I listened to the entirety of the meeting (via the webcast set up for it), and this article is the result of several pages of my notes from it.

  • http://undefined Rachel Lissner

    That is an excellent point.

  • http://undefined Vincent Clement

    Just because you don’t like the outcome does not mean that it was undemocratic or unfair.
    Last I checked, you can’t do research without students. So any investment in research is also an investment in students.
    U of T wants to reduce the number of undergrads at the St. George campus. That does not mean they are not committed to undergrads. Contrary to Paul’s comment that “Toronto’s universities and their satellite campuses are effectively full”, there is room for undergrad growth at U of T Mississauga and U of T Scarborough. There is something to be said of smaller undergrad classes.