Carleton hosted a budget town hall meeting on Jan. 16 to outline the challenges faced with the changing framework of Ontario funding for post-secondary institutions.
Changes in demographics are also posing some challenges, according to Michel Piché, Carleton’s vice-president (finance and administration).
Piché presented the information on Carleton’s financial situation at the public meeting.
“We’re having to deal with an interesting situation of significant changes in government policies that will impact not just one area, but many different areas, and will have an effect on how we budget for next year and also the coming years,” he said.
Piché said demographic shifts mean there will be fewer 18-year-olds in Ontario (the age of most first-year students), which could mean lower enrolment numbers in the future. This means the university would receive less money in student fees, which make up 58 per cent of the university’s operating revenue. The majority of the rest of the revenue is made up of government grants, but Piché said these have been declining in recent years.
“In terms of demographics, we’ve been riding a pretty positive trend, but now we’re kind of seeing some clouds on the horizon with the demographics starting to catch up to us,” he said.
Piché said changes were made to the government’s funding formula that help universities who are seeing a drop in enrolment, but don’t fund new growth for universities that are growing. This could be a problem for Carleton, he said.
“If you see growth for whatever reason this model is going to be create stress on a university’s budget,” Piché said.
Another problem for Carleton’s future budget is the plan for a new university campus in the Greater Toronto Area, where a significant number of Carleton’s students come from.
Piché also took questions and comments from the audience about next year’s budget.
Ashley Courchene, Carleton University Students’ Association vice-president (student services), asked whether some of the university’s budget could be used to pay for a proposed women’s-only gym hour.
Piché said that Athletics is considered an ancillary activity, meaning that it is supported by student fees, and therefore has to be self-sufficient and can’t be supported by tuition dollars.
Carleton president Roseann Runte said the provincial government refuses to allow universities to use their budgets for ancillary activities.
Charissa Feres, vice-president (student issues) of the Student Alliance for Mental Health, raised the issue of the long wait times students face when trying to access on-campus mental health services. They said students have to wait four months to see a psychiatrist.
“In 2015-16, Health and Counselling Services had about 10,500 visits to counselling out of a total of 40,000 visits,” they said. “According to the director of Health and Counselling Services, wait time for counsellors is about six weeks.”
The neuroscience department’s move out of the Life Sciences Research Building was also raised at the town hall by Greg Owens, a fifth-year neuroscience student. He asked whether the university had a contingency fund set aside to compensate students for lost time or an inability to complete research because of the move.
Piché said money has been set aside to deal with the move and the university would be “as accomodating as [it] reasonably can.” He added if a student has to come back for another year because they are not able to complete a reserarch project, they would not be charged tuition.
According to Piché, “Our goal is maintain a balanced operating budget and it’s very important from the perspective of being able to deal with unforeseen events.”
