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Aiming higher: across Canada, about 1.1 million full-time students were enrolled in post-secondary institutions in 2001, but thousands have been turned away because of lack of space or they have not applied for admission because the cost of tuition is too high for them.

Article Excerpt
It is widely accepted that the future prosperity of Canada rests on having a well-educated workforce. Yet, the cost to students of postsecondary education has risen rapidly over the last few years as government funding has dropped dramatically. Since the early 1980s, public funding of post-secondary education in Canada has gone down by 30 percent.

A post-secondary education is now out of reach for poorer Canadians. Those who can get to college and university often end up with debts on graduation that are measured in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Obviously, universities and colleges need money; lots of it. Public post-secondary education institutions in Canada receive most of their direct funding from provincial/territorial and federal government sources. The largest share comes directly from the provinces and territories. The balance comes from tuition fees; research grants; contracts with business and industry; government research contracts; donations; and investment income.

Since the early 1990s, tuition fees have accounted for an increasing proportion of university revenues. In 2002, student fees accounted for 19 percent of university total revenues.

In 2001-02, Canada's total spending on public education reached $58 billion. About $38 billion was directed to the elementary and secondary levels, $10 billion to community college and trade-level programs, and $10 billion to universities.

Former Ontario Premier Bob Rae reported on the crisis facing universities and colleges in Ontario in 2004. His prescription for recovery is a combination of higher tuition fees and increased government funding. The systems have been underfunded for decades, largely because of health-care demands and tax cuts. While per capita spending on higher education in Ontario has dropped by 18 percent since 1987, per capita spending on health care has gone up by 30 percent. Canada...

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