Senate Agenda - EXHIBIT VI - January 28, 2000

Report on the 248th Meeting of the Council of Ontario Universities

December 16, 17, 1999

D.M.R. Bentley, Academic Colleague

t the Academic Colleagues' Caucus preceding the meeting of Council, there was much discussion of two issues:

• The SuperBuild program and its current and future utility to the Government as a means of (a) extracting from the universities their plans for dealing with the increased enrolment associated with the "double cohort"; and (b) providing a series of projects that can be strategically unveiled as evidence of the Government's response to the requests of the universities for additional funding.
• The "Proposal from Ontario's Universities" for increased funding of 8% in return for a variety of commitments.

At the meeting of Council, there was extensive discussion about the ways, means, and timing of COU's financial representations to the Government, the most vociferously expressed view being that the universities should take a principled stance on the issue of quality and refuse to increase enrolments without additional funding.

Various reports included the following information:

• figures from the Ontario Universities Application Centre indicate an increase of approximately 5% over last year.
• $500,000 of software will be purchased by the universities (with $250,000 assistance, it is hoped, from the Government) in order to monitor deferred maintenance and thus make a better case for facilities renewal.
• athletic scholarships continue to be a matter of debate but, with a couple of dissenters, the universities have reaffirmed their opposition to such scholarships.
• the Federal Government is unsympathetic to calls to increase transfer payments for the education sector but shows some receptivity to the concept of the full cost of research.
• applications for money from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation total three or four times the available funds.
• the Federal Government has established a Panel on Software Engineering chaired by James Downey, the ex-President of the University of Waterloo (and a specialist on eighteenth-century English literature).
• the Ontario College of Art and Design has applied for degree-granting status, and the concept of "applied degrees" is meeting with an enthusiastic response from the Government.

Professor Albert Katz's question anent the discriminatory advertisement recently placed by the Department of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University of whether the COU has a position on such ads was raised at both the Colleagues' Caucus and the meeting of Council. At the suggestion of the Colleagues, it was referred to the standing committees on Employment and Educational Equity and the Status of Women.