In the middle of a provincial election campaign in Ontario that neglected postsecondary issues, despite a major funding crisis in the sector, York University announced it would temporarily suspend admission to 18 undergraduate programs. Following faculty pushback on procedural grounds, this plan may be put on hold, but the threat has not abated. Many Ontario academics recall when Laurentian University cut 35 percent of its undergraduate programs, 25 percent of its graduate programs, and over 100 faculty and staff in 2021. These cuts had devastating effects on the university, the Laurentian community, and the City of Sudbury. They also sent a chill through Ontario’s academic community due to the deeply disturbing devaluation of universities that the cuts signalled.
In a democratic society a university is not a “business” that sells degrees. It can serve as a bulwark against disinformation and against manipulation of the population by powerful interests. The mission of a university is to pursue and disseminate truth and knowledge, and academia is an ecosystem of continuous checks and balances meant to ensure that it is academic rigour—not profit or partisan interests—that determines the conclusions of academic research. Reliable research helps the public to see through lies and propaganda, to better understand, rather than dismiss, one another, and to hold the powerful to account.
The critical democratic potential of universities has been recognized internationally, and it is no coincidence that we are seeing increased political interference in universities, not just in Ontario and other provinces but across the United States and in other countries. Attempts to devalue scholarship and higher education go hand in hand with far-right, authoritarian politics and politicians gaining power.
Ontario’s academic community witnessed this devaluation in what unfolded at Laurentian in 2021: after decades of systematic starvation of the sector by successive provincial governments, university administrators mismanaged funds in ill-conceived attempts to generate revenue, running the university increasingly like a business. Laurentian’s administration circumvented the university’s collegial governance checks and balances, and ultimately initiated a $30 million process through which corporate creditors effectively carved up the university, deciding which fields of enquiry were worth keeping and which were not.
What many in the academic community knew about Laurentian is also true of York: it’s not really about the money. It is, instead, a political choice in a battle between competing visions of the university. Creating a financial crisis in universities gives leverage to those who want to ensure that universities serve power, rather than critique it.
York University is in immediate financial trouble, although the situation is not nearly as dire as Laurentian’s in 2021. However, the York administration’s decision to pause admissions to undergraduate programs is not really about the money in the sense that the provincial government’s own “Blue-Ribbon Panel” on Postsecondary Education Financial Sustainability demonstrated the viability of Ontario’s universities and called on the province to urgently increase funding to levels the provincial government has chosen not to meet.
The York administration’s recent spending decisions further demonstrate that the program suspensions are political choices, not financial necessities. A 47 percent increase in compensation for senior administration, a massive investment commitment to a medical school that has not yet been accredited, and hundreds of millions of dollars in spending on a parade of capital projects that have been pursued without full financial assessments are just some of the expenditures being prioritized over educational programming. [These echo some of the choices made for Laurentian University where French and Indigenous languages were devalued, and programs focused on community care were cancelled, in favour of capital projects and programming in alignment with corporate R&D priorities.]
The York administration’s criteria for deciding which programs warranted temporary suspension are also indicative of these priorities. A model that measures viability solely by the number of declared majors dramatically oversimplifies educational programming, and ignores many students who take courses in those subjects as minors, double majors, or electives. It also flouts the interdisciplinarity that universities claim to facilitate and disadvantages programs (often in the humanities and social sciences) that students pursue to supplement the perspectives of their focus area. Interdisciplinary study is necessary to ensure, for instance, that science and tech students are educated about ethics, equity, and power so they understand the impact their work is going to have on society.
Furthermore, using oversimplified numerical criteria obscures the political nature of the choices being made. Small programs and small classes are where experimental pedagogies and controversial new ideas are often developed, and where the most transformative learning takes place. Cutting classes and programs with low enrolments restricts students’ ability to learn about ideas and subjects that are not already well-known and popular. This prevents them from receiving a true education that challenges them to think beyond the status quo—and it hinders the development of new forms of knowledge.
This is because an undergraduate program is not a discrete product that can be pulled from the shelves if it’s not selling well. Undergraduate programs not only educate students but also allow faculty to develop and disseminate new ideas, they generate the TAships that graduate students live off of, and they inspire future graduate students in that subject. It takes decades to build undergraduate and graduate programs that attract students in the specific areas needed to sustain faculty research in particular fields. Graduate programs also train the next generation of professors who will continue to advance knowledge in those fields and educate future students. Cuts to undergraduate program admissions thus strike a blow to the chain of knowledge production in those subjects—and can be understood as epistemic attacks on those entire fields of knowledge.
Like Laurentian in 2021, York has a foundational commitment to critical research and education that serves local, diverse, and francophone communities. In both universities, the programs cut include many subjects related to these mandates. It is difficult not to see the cuts as an attempt to re-orient these universities away from their critical focus, rather than as a simple matter of financial necessity.
It is even harder not to see York’s program admission suspensions as political choices in the current context of rising racism, transphobia, and hate. Suspending admission to programs like Indigenous Studies; Gender and Women’s Studies; Jewish Studies; and a number of programs that promote inter-cultural learning and understanding in this context exposes the superficiality of York’s commitments to equity and reconciliation and contributes to the current backlash against these fields.
It is noteworthy that, before the program changes at both Laurentian and York were announced, these institutions had strong, organized faculty, staff, and students who had successfully defended the university mission against previous attempts to replace it with corporate and partisan/conformist logics. In both cases, decisions about major program changes were made in secret, outside of normal channels. It is hard not to see York’s cuts as a “shock doctrine” tactic similar to Laurentian’s: as a way to escalate these restructuring attempts in order to circumvent resistance and bully the university community into submission. By stifling critical thought and redirecting public funding of universities toward corporate R&D and job training rather than the pursuit of knowledge in the public interest, we lose the democratic value universities can provide.
I studied at York for two years, and I doubt the York community will be easily silenced. It is my hope, though, that what is happening at York University shows Ontarians that the Laurentian debacle wasn’t unique. Laurentian was a warning of what awaits if we continue to elect governments that value universities as an extension of partisan and business interests, rather than a foundation for a democratic society.
