1. A Snapshot of the Post-secondary and Research Landscape: Students, Funding, and Faculty
James Compton, CAUT Past President

2. Significant growth in full-time University student enrolment
Source: Statistics Canada, PSIS
What you see here is the big increase in FT university enrolment over this 15-year period, representing a 60% increase from 600,000 to just over a million. Much less growth in college enrolment ((16%)

3. Huge amount of growth at the graduate level
99% increase
81% increase
50% increase
Source: Statistics Canada, PSIS

4. Year-over-year growth rate has declined over the past decade, esp
Year-over-year growth rate has declined over the past decade, esp. for PhD students
Source: Statistics Canada, PSIS
Below 1 percent growth in PhD students for the last 3 years .

5. Student enrolment growth would have slowed much more, were it not for international students
Source: Statistics Canada, PSIS
1 in 3 PhD students are now international students
1 in 4 Master’s students are international students

6. Significant decline in PSE funding in most provinces
% change NL
33% PE
-19% NS 4% NB
24% QC
-6% ON
-17% MB
-10% SK
-23% AB BC
-20%
Canadian average
-12%
Source: Statistics Canada, CAUBO and PSIS
These numbers include the federal contribution through the Canada Social Transfer.
Looking at long-term fiscal sustainability in 2018, the Parliamentary Budget Officer concluded that provincial governments do not have sufficient fiscal capacity to deliver current programs over the long term. The PBO also concluded that the federal government has the fiscal room and is best positioned to ensure fiscal sustainability. [move to next slide]

7. Federal public funding for PSE has been flat
Federal cash transfers as % of GDP
Source: Statistics Canada, Finance Canada
Yet there has been a long-term decline in federal funding for PSE, from half a percent of GDP in the 1980s to just 1/5th of a percent. The federal government last provided a dedicated infusion for PSE in 2008 with a $800-million increase through the Canada Social Transfer.

8. With less public funding, tuition fees are high and increasing
Source: Statistics Canada, TLAC
The picture provides an overview of the increase in domestic undergraduate tuition fees and living expenses by province over the past ten years, as well as a 40% increase in outstanding Canada Student Loans for this period.
International student tuition fees are deregulated and have increase much faster than domestic fees. More than 4 times Canadian undergrad tuition, and more than double grad tuition.
- High tuition fees impact affordability of PSE, lead to high debt burdens, and regressive impacts with financing through loans

9. Revenue from tuition fees replaces public funding
Source: Statistics Canada, CAUBO
Public funding has declined from 80% to 50%, while tuition fee revenues now represent 40% of university operating revenues.

10. Faculty salaries are not the culprit
Source: Statistics Canada, CAUBO
It is sometimes said that the problem is not a problem of funding PSE institutions properly, but that wages and salaries are too high. Yet faculty salaries represented more than 30% of total university expenditures in the 1970s and 1980s but have declined to 20% currently.

11. No renewal of university academic staff
Source: Statistics Canada, UCASS
What are some of the impacts of inadequate funding for PSE?
21% decline in tenure-track position, but almost a doubling in 12-month or more positions off the tenure –track. Importantly, UCASS does not (yet) track per-course academics. The increasing reliance on contract academic staff, who are trained as researchers, is a huge underutilization of Canadian research potential but also raises fairness concerns [next slide].

12. Increasing reliance on contract academics and the creation of a 2-tiered workforce
Here are some of the results of CAUT’s national survey of 2600 contract academic staff, which is a qualitative survey.
It is often said that those on contract simply don’t want a full-time, permanent position, but 53% of respondents said they wanted a tenure-track position.
It is also often thought that those on contract are primarily professionals who work full-time elsewhere, yet the survey showed the precarious existence of these CAS with almost half saying they are living month-to-month with current income.
The survey also found that women and racialized CAS work more hours per course, per week than their colleagues and are more likely to be in low-income households.

13. Significant diversity & equity challenges in the PSE sector
The other recent CAUT report “Underrepresented and Underpaid”, based on an analysis of census data, reveals that the academic workforce is not as diverse as either the student body it serves, or the general labour force, and that wage gaps remain entrenched between men and women; and between white, Indigenous and racialized academic staff.
- Wage gaps exist between men and women and worsen for racialized and Aboriginal university and college teachers.  The wage gap is deepest for racialized women professors who earn on average 68 cents for every dollar earned by their white male colleagues;
- Racialized, Aboriginal and women teachers are less-likely to have full-time, full-year employment.
- Racialized post-secondary teachers have the highest rates of unemployment; and
- As the number of assistant professor positions has declined considerably which will slow progress as women, racialized and Aboriginal academics are unable to secure tenure-track positions.

14. Federal research grant success rates
Granting Council competition results
Fundable
Funded
SSHRC Standard Research Grant/Insight Grant
65%
33%
66%
47%
NSERC Discovery Grant -
71%
CIHR Open Operating Grant/Foundations grant and Project Grant
29%
12%-15%
Source: SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR
- The vast majority of university-based research is funded through the federal research councils. You can see that peer review committees normally deem about 2/3 of applications fundable, but the research dollars available mean much less is actually funded. One minor point about the success rates for SSHRC: it is true that the success rates have dramatically increased over the past years, but it is equally true that the average grant has decreased substantially in recent years by about 40% from $198K in 2014 to $138K in So there is a tradeoff here: you can give more researchers less money or you can give a few researchers more money. When properly funded, you don’t need to make that difficult choice.
- While progress has been made, there are also still significant differences in success rates between men and women esp. for CIHR and NSERC

15. Recent developments
The CCR and the broader research community lobbied very hard for the Federal Science Review for fundamental research
About 1/3rd of the funding that the Advisory Panel recommended has been realized
System sustainability remains the goal: the need for a comprehensive funding strategy for fundamental research, faculty renewal, and post-secondary education in Canada