Letter to the Members of the Western Community

A. The Context

B. The Increased Cohort

C. The Costs of Expansion

D. What will this increased cohort mean for Western?

E. The Increased Cohort, Student Quality, and Program Diversity

F. Toward a University Position on the Increased Cohort

In March of this year, the Council of Ontario Universities (COU) released a report entitled "Ontario's Students/Ontario's Future." This report predicts an increase in demand for university places of between 25% and 40% by the end of the next decade. This substantial increase in demand is anticipated as a result of a number of factors: growth in the 18- to 24-year-old segment of Ontario's population, an increased university participation rate, and more string ent educational requirements in the workforce. The timing of this increase in demand will be accelerated substantially by the impending elimination of grade 13 and the OAC structure in the province's secondary school system and the resulting double cohort .

The COU report also documents the financial investment that will be required if Ontario's universities are to ensure that all qualified students continue to have access to a high quality education. COU calls for this investment to include two component s: 1) funds that will move Ontario's level of funding to the average of the other provinces, and; 2) funds sufficient to support the additional students and maintain the necessary level of ongoing funding.

Although these proposals were constructed in consultation with the government, the Ministry of Education and Training has not responded. It is clear, however, that with the first group of students to graduate from the reconfigures secondary school syst em beginning grade 9 in the fall of this year, plans must be accelerated. Decisions will need to be made without delay if there are to be sufficient qualified members of faculty available to teach additional students and if physical facilities are to be r eady to accommodate them.

As one of the province's largest and leading universities, Western will be expected to play an important part in responding to the need for additional university spaces. As a publically funded institution, we have a special responsibility to ensure tha t qualified students wishing to enter university in the coming decade have the same access to a quality education as did their counterparts in the past. We have It is likely that the timeline available to the University to decide on the nature and extent of its role will be short. This document is intended to provide the University community with information about the increased cohort and a sense of the choices that we are likely to be facing in the near future - choices that could have a profound impact on the quality, nature, and shape of our University for some time to come.

1. A more comprehensive description of issues related to the increased cohort can be found in the following document, available from any Dean's Office: Ontario's Students/Ontario's Future, Council of Ontario Universities, March, 1999.

B. The Increased Cohort

• Ontario is about to face the greatest increase in demand for university access in over 30 years, resulting from a combination of factors: 1) an increase in the population of 18- to 24-year-olds - "the echo of the baby boom"; 2) a rising university participation rate; and, 3) changing workforce educational requirements.
• This increased demand will be accelerated by the "double cohort" anticipated as a result of the reform of Ontario's secondary schools, including the elimination of Grade 13.
• According to projections, full-time university enrolment will increase by 25% to 40%, or 53,900 to 88,900 students. The projected net impact of the higher of these two scenarios is illustrated below. In order to meet this demand, Ontario's university system will need to increase its capacity by an amount equivalent to the combined current enrolments of Lakehead, Laurentian, McMaster, Ottawa, Waterloo, and York.

• The increased demand will begin immediately but will accelerate greatly in the period 2002-04 with the arrival of the double cohort.
• Far from being a temporary effect then, the "double cohort" will transform a substantial but gradual increase in demand for university places into a step function, thus dramatically increasing the challenge of accommodating these students.
• Although the most obvious impact of this increased demand will be on first-entry undergraduate programs, demand for second entry professional programs and graduate programs will increase in a parallel but, in most cases, a delayed fashion.

• The Ontario government funds its universities at a level far below the average of Canada's other provinces. The shortfall in funding is dramatically illustrated in an examination of student/faculty ratios.
• Ontario's student/faculty ratio is the highest in Canada. Over the past 10 years, the student/faculty ratio at Ontario universities has steadily increased, until it is now more than 20% above the average of the other nine provinces.

• The incline in student/faculty ratio in Ontario's universities underscores the need to address current funding shortfalls before considering further enrolment expansion.
• Once this shortfall has been addressed, enrolments could expand if funding is provided for the real operating costs of the additional students (including additional faculty and non-academic staff), the associated research infrastructure costs, capital funding to address existing deferred maintenance and expanded physical facilities, and the increased student aid required to ensure access.
• COU has modelled these funding requirements as follows:
• Operating costs in this model include: 1) indirect costs of research, 2) costs of quality improvement and, 3) real funding for enrolment growth.
• The "low scenario" model assumes an increase in enrolment of only 53,900 students; the "high scenario" involves an increase of 88,900 and proportionately higher costs.

 * Total Cost Scenario Graphs: Student Assistance (Green); Capital Requirements (Brown); Operating Grant Requirements (Yellow)

• Although the Ministry of Education and Training (MET) has been working on these models with COU over the past six months, we have no indication of the government's intentions, other than the unusually large capital allocation includ ed in the pre-election budget.
• In spite of this uncertainty regarding the funding scenario for the enrolment expansion, the reality of imminent increased demand for university spaces is that major planning decisions will be expected from Ontario's universities within the next 9-12 months.
• It is important that the members of the Western community engage the question of how to respond to the increased cohort so that we will be in a position to construct a specific proposal when funding mechanisms are announced.

• This question signals the decisions facing Western over the coming months. Western will be expected to play an important role in ensuring access for the increased university-age cohort. One approach would be for Western to accommodate i ts pro-rata share of the increased cohort in an across-the-board fashion, i.e. increasing enrolment equally in all of its programs and years. Such an approach would see our first year, direct entry intake, currently at approximately 4000, rise to 5600 stu dents. However, it is important that the nature of the role Western plays in responding to the increased cohort should be consistent with our institutional vision and responsive to our obligations to the meet needs of our students.
• The availability of additional funding and the formula used to allocate such funding will be crucial determinants of Western's ability to accommodate new students. The underfunding of Ontario's universities already challenges our ab ility to provide a high quality education to our current students. It will be impossible for the University to accommodate additional students unless this situation is addressed and real full funding of the costs of educating additional students is provid ed.

Answers to the following questions will determine Western's response to the increased cohort:

1. What size share of the increased provincial cohort should the University, as a whole, strive to accommodate? What are the trade-offs between size, student qualifications, and program quality?
2. How should this share be allocated across Western's various undergraduate and graduate programs?
3. What are some of the issues and unknowns that provide the context for internal discussions of Western's position?

The following considerations will influence our response to this question as it relates to our admissions to first-entry undergraduate programs:

• Western has made considerable progress in the past 5 years in reversing a downward trend in the average entering grade of our incoming class. The objective of continuing this trend has received widespread support in Senate and acros s campus.

• Western aspires to increase the quality of its incoming students. This would be less of a challenge for a smaller university than for Western. The challenge is even greater because Western is a large university in a relatively small population centre. The graph below shows enrolments relative to local population, for Ontario's large universities.
• This demographic data underscores the challenge faced by a larger university in recruiting the most highly qualified students outside of the GTA. Western remains committed to increasing the average entering grade of its students, pa rticularly in first-entry programs. The scale of expansion, then, will be as much a function of the competitiveness of each of our programs as of the size of the increased cohort itself. If, as some anticipate, the increased cohort is disproportionately l ocated in the GTA, the challenge of raising standards of admission will be even greater than it has been in recent years.

The increased cohort will not be limited to admissions to first-entry undergraduate programs. Western could choose to respond to the increased cohort in a wide variety of patterns across its undergraduate and graduate programs. Although the fun ding formula for such expansion will have an important impact on these options, a number of issues deserve consideration:

• The rapid increase in enrolment associated with the double cohort might prompt the University to take unusual measures to accommodate these first-entry undergraduate students in the short term but to choose to adopt a somewhat different strategy in th e longer run.
• It may be strategic to expand some undergraduate programs more than others. For example, Western's Engineering Science program remains disproportionately small relative to those at comparable research-intensive universities. Some programs may choose t o forego enrolment expansion in exchange for an opportunity to draw more qualified first-year students from the expanded provincial applicant pool.
• In the past year, there has been an increase in the number of non-honours, 4-year undergraduate programs. This trend towards reducing enrolment in 3-year programs raises the possibility of increasing total undergraduate enrolment across all years whil e moderating the increase in first-year undergraduate admissions. This outcome would be consistent with the objective of increasing admission standards while at the same time meeting student demand for more comprehensive undergraduate degree programs.
• Western supports a wide variety of outstanding, second-entry professional programs. Societal demand might argue for a disproportionately large expansion of some these programs in combination with a smaller increase in first-entry programs relative to universities with fewer second-entry programs. For example, Western's BEd enrolment is being increased by a total of about 175 students over the next two years (i.e. 1999-2000 and 2000-01) in response to an anticipated shortage of teachers in the province . Some in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry have argued that a shortage of physicians in southwestern Ontario provides the basis for an expansion of Western's MD enrolment in the near future. Demand for Western's outstanding HBA program continues to i ncrease, which provides the opportunity for further expansions. Also, discussions are underway within the province regarding the shortage of Nurses and the need for expansion of Nursing education.
• Many of Western's graduate programs, given an increase in faculty and sufficient student funding, could expand.

Western's rich program diversity and the high quality of our programs provide us with many options in planning overall enrolment expansion. It is essential that Faculties, Departments, and Schools begin without delay the task of modelling plans that ar e consistent with their strategic objectives. The opportunity and challenges posed by the increased cohort and the promise of real investment in Ontario's universities will not arise again soon for Western. The choices made at this time are likely to shap e the University for decades to come.

• The government has not committed to an investment in quality improvement in the province's universities independent of funding for expansion. If all new funds are associated with expansion, those universities choosing to take as many new stude nts as possible will be allocated the larger share of new funding --- but at what cost to those students and to those already present in the institution?
• COU has argued that expansion-related funding should be allocated for increased admissions in first year of undergraduate, upper years of undergraduate programs, second entry undergraduate programs, and graduate programs. The increased cohort most cer tainly will result in growth in demand at all of these levels. Should the government fund increased admissions to first-entry undergraduate programs exclusively or preferentially, strategies that focus on expansions in other areas will be less attractive.

1. This discussion paper will be circulated widely across campus in an effort to provide the community with the information necessary to understand the issues facing Western in the coming 6-12 months.
2. The Provost will meet with Deans and and Faculty Executives/Council of Chairs, and with the unit heads of Physical Plant, Housing and Food Services, and other support and ancillary units in June and July, 1999, to discuss the planning issues and proce ss.
3. The Provost will hold open meetings in the early fall of 1999 to discuss the issue. These meetings will include both open-invitation and Faculty-specific gatherings.
4. Deans will be asked to begin a process of planning within their Faculties that will culminate with proposals that will be included in their Faculty Annual Plans as part of the 2000-01 University planning cycle.
5. A working group will be formed immediately by the Provost to begin analyzing the academic and financial impact of various options and responding to information arising from COU and MET in the coming months. The group will involve the Chair of SCUP, tw o Deans, Directors of IPB, ITS, PPD, and the Registrar.
6. The Provost will report regularly to SCUP and the Senior Operations, and Property and Finance Committees of the Board of Governors on discussions towards the formulation of a plan to be submitted to these committees regarding enrolment and expansion i n response to the increased cohort as part of the University's annual plan for 2000-01.

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