Yesterday, we looked at the state of childcare policy in Canada, at least in the event of a continued Liberal government.  Today I want to walk through what the precedent set by the new childcare accords might mean for higher education.

Many, including myself, have long maintained that the idea of the federal government coming in creating a national policy on tuition – whether it be “lower than at present” or zero – was essentially impossible because it involves paying provinces vastly different amounts to achieve the same ends.  In Ontario, one would have to pay something on the order of $8000 per student to achieve this goal, whereas in Quebec it would be closer to $3000 (these numbers change a bit depending on whether you think “tuition free” gets rid of just tuition or tuition plus various ancillary fees).  Quebec clearly would not accept $3000 per student when Ontario would be getting $8000, so the only other theoretical possibility would be to pay every province what the Ontario amount, and letting them pocket the difference.

Until very recently that seemed like a deal the feds would never take.  And then the new childcare accords came along.  It was the same problem as tuition: provinces such as Alberta and Ontario spend very little on childcare while Quebec spends a ton, so whatever subsidies were on offer to create a “national price” for childcare would either must go disproportionately to provinces who had previously done very little, or there would need to be massive payoffs to Quebec to pay for things it was already doing.  Which sounds outlandish, right?

And then the feds did exactly that a few months ago on childcare: signed a memorandum of understanding with Quebec worth billions which requires Quebec to do something closely adjacent to nothing – certainly not with respect to reducing fees, anyway.  I’m sure the free tuition folks took notice of this, and that this will now be pointed to as the way forward to a national policy on tuition.

Now, the current historical moment – the one where apparently no one cares how much money we’re spending because WHEEEEEEEE DEFICITS DON’T MATTER – is probably going to be short.  Financial markets have a way of taking care of that kind of behaviour, sooner or later.  But “short” in historical terms could still mean a few years.  And in the meantime, there’s a decent chance of perpetual Liberal minority governments chasing NDP votes with ever-greater spending promises.  And in this “short” period in front of us, I would not rule out the possibility that a federal government of one stripe or another might try to promise free tuition using roughly this kind of instrument.  Not saying it’s the likeliest outcome or anything, but it’s no longer outside the realm of possibility.

Now, to be clear, this should be a non-starter.  Whatever problems exist in terms of access to post-secondary education in Canada – and Canada has one of the highest rates of access to post-secondary education in the world (see our recent SPEC, chapter 6) – they can be solved a whole hell of a lot more cheaply than spending billions of dollars to eliminate tuition.  Most of the money spent will be windfall money – that is, money students and their families would get for doing what they were going to do anyway.  This has been true every time free tuition has been introduced and it will most definitely be true in Canada as well.  The money will disproportionately go to students from more affluent backgrounds, because that’s who goes to post-secondary education (something that is unlikely to change much l if tuition goes to zero, as a comparison of American and Scandinavian student bodies shows).  And among recipients, the poorer ones – who already pay lower net prices than their wealthier counterparts (see HESA’s 2014 paper The Many Prices of Knowledge) – will receive the least net benefit. 

But the problem is, lots of people just like the sound of the word free, regressive consequences be damned.  It sounds good, in the same way that $10/day childcare sounds good.  And so not enough people think about things like opportunity costs and alternate ways that billions of dollars could be spent, to make higher education better, to improve research, or student services, or improved educational IT.    In such a context, one could easily imagine the federal government showing up in front of the provinces – as they did with childcare – and offering big money to make education free.

It might be a lot harder to make work.  Higher education is much more heterogenous than childcare and that will make negotiations difficult.  The feds might come in and say, “make tuition free”.  And the provinces – at least those not tempted to just grab the money and run – might say: undergraduate tuition only?  Or graduate and professional, too?  For an unlimited period, or can we start charging if students stay beyond a certain period What about ancillary fees?  Or fees for mandatory purchases like computers?  What if we want to tilt enrolments more towards expensive science and technology programs, will you pay the extra costs of that?  This could get sticky fast.

Even if they tried to do something simple (and arguably much less regressive) like “make community college tuition free”, it still gets messy.  How do you count CEGEPs, the first year of which is in the postsecondary system in every other province?  Do diploma and certificate programs count equally?  How do you engineer equality across diploma programs that are three years in length (the normal case in Ontario) versus two (the norm in most other provinces)?  Again, theoretically simple, but could get sticky quickly. 

But then, if a government just wants to dump the maximum amount of money on the problem to make it happen, windfall gains be damned, none of this might matter.  Until of course the day comes when everyone remembers that budgets, eventually, must come into at least some kind of balance.  At which point, presumably, the feds will start cutting back subsidies while insisting that provinces have to keep tuition free, thus resulting in financially weakened institutions across the country.    

I’m not making a prediction about any of this: I’m just saying it could happen.  And it could happen because the post-secondary sector has been too quiet about the effects of a long-term funding freeze.  It has been too content to bask in the profits of the international student market, and to let it slide every time politicians prioritize making higher education cheaper rather than making it better.  And unless consensus gets built for better over cheaper, then the scenario laid out above might well come to pass.