May 14, 2007
The quality of undergraduate education in Ontario remains at risk despite the government’s five-year, $6.2-billion Reaching Higher plan, which pledged enough funds to hire more professors. There has been no improvement in student-faculty ratios, however, because inflation-adjusted, per-student funding is still well below the 1990s. Faculty hiring has not kept pace with enrolment increases, so in 2003-04 Ontario had a student-faculty ratio of 27 students to each full-time professor, while American peer institutions had a 15 to one ratio. Ontario needs 11,000 more professors by the end of the decade and needs to make a commitment to recruit full-time, tenure-stream faculty.
Keywords: Reaching Higher; student-faculty ratio; ratio; per student funding; funding; faculty; hiring
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