According to the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario's predictions, the future of postsecondary education in Ontario will include increased diversity among students (due to continued immigration, growth in the number of adult learners, and efforts to increase participation by currently underrepresented groups); continued enrolment growth; greater student mobility between institutions; and technology-enabled changes to program delivery. Additional changes include gradual economic constraint, increasing integration with business and industry, and an extensive use of technology.
Ontario's Ministry of Finance identified five significant pressures currently faced by the postsecondary sector in Ontario: educating a growing share of the population; helping equalize economic and social outcomes across the population; providing an important component of lifelong learning; functioning as an engine of innovation; and delivering quality education with a constrained provincial fiscal situation.
The rapid increase (60% from in the last decade) in student enrollment in Ontario universities has not been met in similar increase of university professors (28% increase in the same time span) resulting in a student-to-faculty ratio of 26-1, which is much higher than the national average. Enrolment is projected to increase by an average of 1.7% through to 2017-18, meaning one of every six adult Ontarians will be enrolled in Ontario public post-secondary institutions. Internationalization of higher education is also on the rise, as the number of domestic students studying abroad and international students studying in Canada is increasing rapidly.
Students who are involved in higher education programs in western developed economies may have a gross rate of return to a year's additional education ranging between 5 and 10 per cent. The World Bank, amongst other development specialists, has recognized that low levels of education are often key risk factors for poverty. A TD Economics paper reports that a university-educated worker's weekly earnings are on average 61 per cent higher than their counterparts with just a high school education. However, in combining the revenues for peer state private and public universities, Ontario invested 44 per cent less annually in its university system compared with the system in the peer states. Continuous under funding of education can be linked to Ontario's prosperity gap. Studies reflect that underfunding in education is one of the contributing factors of a $6,000 per person prosperity gap between Ontario and the jurisdictional average.
The Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development's Reaching Higher plan for postsecondary education in the province, initiated in 2005, includes a $6.2 Billion commitment to postsecondary education to address such issues as capacity, access, financial assistance and more. The plan calls for, among other deliverables, a target postsecondary attainment rate of 70%. Following the October 2011 provincial election which resulted in a Liberal minority, the government re-affirmed its commitment to the reaching higher plan by announcing that 3 new undergraduate campuses will be established to serve increasing demand.
Academic Reform: Policy Options for Improving the Quality and Cost-Effectiveness of Undergraduate Education in Ontario, written by Ian D. Clark, David Trick and Richard J. Van Loon, provides recommendations on the way forward for Ontario higher education.