Financial crisis facing agricultural institutions

By Terry Daynard – Special to the Daily Post

The University of Guelph (UofG) is facing a financial crisis of unprecedented scale – with particularly negative implications for the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) and agricultural education in this province. Rural Ontarions need to know what’s going on and what it means for them.

The reasons for the crisis are several and include teaching and maintenance costs (many old buildings) which continue to grow faster than government and tuition revenues, but the result is that UofG must cut annual spending by at least $46 million. In turn, the university has assigned phased-in cuts to personnel budgets for individual colleges based mainly on teaching loads.

The percentage varies among colleges within the university and because OAC has only 8% of undergraduate teaching, it has been assigned a cut of more than 40%. When you factor out that a portion of OAC’s staffing costs are funded through UofG’s research contract with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the actual cut to OAC’s teaching staff exceeds 50 pec cent. You cannot cut personnel by more than 50 per cent without having a huge impact on the quality of education.

The current cuts apply primarily to teaching at the Guelph campus, but Alfred, Kemptville and Ridgetown are not immune. Tighter budgets will mean more cuts everywhere.

A critical problem for OAC is the fact that fewer kids are enrolling in agricultural programs. Although OAC continues to have high numbers of grad students and researchers, the annual number of graduates from all OAC undergraduate degree programs has dropped to about 260, from approximately 400 in the late 1980s. The number of diploma graduates in agriculture has also decreased. Declining student numbers mean declining teaching budgets. There are significantly more jobs available than OAC graduates – but high school students aren’t seeing the benefits of an education in agriculture so they enroll elsewhere.

What’s at stake is the supply of well-trained graduates for the next generation of Ontario agriculture and food, and perhaps the very existence of the OAC itself, regional campuses included. Agricultural education must become more of a priority for agri-food and rural groups – and more industry support is needed for student recruitment in particular.

Despite its financial challenges, the OAC, along with 4-H Ontario is planning a new campaign to attract more students into agricultural careers – in part by emphasizing the exciting and rewarding opportunities that exist. Some funding has been provided by Monsanto Canada, the OAC Alumni Foundation and the Nuffield Foundation, but more is needed to do this properly. This crisis affects us all and it’s time for everyone to pitch in.

Editor’s note: Terry is President of the Graduating Class OAC 65.