Abstract:

For 2015-2016 most Quebec universities plan to achieve their fiscal year with a deficit. This situation, mainly related with the government austerity policy in a context where it assumes a large part of the universities’ operating fund, weakening the quality of their courses and of the entire student experience. In this portrait, some universities are affected more than others. It particularly concerns the ones with medical faculties or those that are exclusively focused on engineering. Nevertheless, the development of medicine and applied science was mainly financed by surplus in other fields, in the 1990 decade, that make actual financial projections looking like a new reality. We could think that it’s related to economy of scale for larger universities but those that are large and don’t have medical faculties and have small engineering faculties are not going to generate a surplus, even if the financing structure is the same for everyone.

Preliminary analysis of the “Information System on University Finances” (ISUF) database shows that we could be facing a system effect derived from two concomitant phenomenons. The first concerns pressure applied since the nineties to reduce expenses in « soft » science programs. These reduction in expenses aim to create surplus that serve in the development of « hard » science programs. These practice had the effect to underestimate the real cost of soft science activities while it overestimates hard science. From that point, it brings down universities revenues from soft science activities, when Quebec government revised the CLARDER chart in 2002-2003. The second phenomenon is related to a wrong classification of the manager’s mass salary expenses in specific universities who declare some of these expenses as teaching expenses. These combined practices bring government to overestimate real cost observed for applied science programs, especially those in the medical field. Primary analysis suggests that these fields are now generating important surplus that would explain the advantage situation of some universities in Québec, compare to others. It also sheds light on priorities and transformations that occur in Québec’s universities.

Keywords:

University, university finances, university funding, university management, public policy, mutating university.