Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services

The division of roles between the college and university systems should include the
following features:
Executive Summary
� After two years of study, college students who meet specific academic achievement criteria
should be able to transfer into the university system;
� Colleges should not be granted any new degree programs, but existing programs should
be grandfathered;
� The government should approve no new PSE programs until existing programs are
rationalized and mandate agreements completed;
� No new professional and specialized programs should be approved without a compelling
business case; and
� The Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology should work with the College of Trades to
optimize the delivery of apprentice training in non-degree programs.
Encourage and Reward Quality: Students are dissatisfied with large class sizes and
inadequate library facilities, among other things. Five specific areas should be addressed:
� Resources and rewards should be refocused towards teaching: Post-secondary
education institutions should devote more resources to experience-based learning such
as internships, allow for more independent study, develop problem-based learning and
increase study abroad. Universities should be encouraged to include in their collective
agreements flexible provisions with faculty regarding teaching and research workloads.
Top-performing teachers and researchers should be recognized with the appropriate
workloads and rewards. Eleven Ontario universities already have such flexibility; others
should follow. Institutions should redesign incentive systems to reward excellent teachers,
as they do now for researchers.
� Refocus provincial funding to reward teaching excellence: Provincial funding
allocations should be linked to quality objectives, and the funding model should reward
degrees awarded rather than just enrolment levels. Government and PSE institutions
should work to ensure that the capacity to integrate ideas and create innovative solutions
to problems is at the heart of the higher education experience. This will be critical to the
economic and social success of Ontario, in an economy where graduates will be working
over their career in ways that cannot even be imagined now.
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