If graduate enrolment targets set by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities are not met by the 2011-12 deadline, The University of Western Ontario will miss out on millions of funding dollars.
Western is shifting its graduate recruitment strategy to make sure provincial money allocated for graduate expansion doesn’t go untapped.
“Basically it would mean we would forfeit new monies coming in to the university,” says Linda Miller, Vice-Provost, School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. “It’s not just change.”
Miller says the university is on track to meet the enrolment projections set by the faculties as part of their annual planning process. These projections, however, fall short of targets related to the ministry’s funding for graduate expansion.
In the spring, Western was given a second set of enrolment expansion targets, providing a new allotment of funding from the ministry for extra spaces. However, the university based its current graduate expansion on the original funding allocation.
Based on the numbers in last year’s planning process, the faculties would likely reach targets for master’s student enrolment, but fall short for PhD students by about 75 full-time spots. The faculties are revising projections to examine opportunities for growth.
“The faculty targets that they set for the first round of expansion were pretty much consistent with what the ministry allocations were for expansion. But the second round that the ministry has given us is a little bit more ambitious than what our faculty targets have been tracking toward,” says Miller.
“Given that there is expansion money attached to the ministry allocations, we’d really like to hit the ministry’s targets because that’s the only new real monies coming in to universities.”
The second-round ministry allocation to Western included funding for an additional 230 PhD and 274 master’s spaces.
Each new graduate student spot allocated by the ministry is worth about $13,330 and each doctoral spot is worth $26,418. The ministry typically funds students for up to two years in a master’s program and four years in the PhD program.
“The bottom line is there really is a lot of money attached to this.”
Looking at the impact on the faculty budgets for 2009-10, Miller says “in terms of what their targets are and the money they would bring in to their faculty that is attached to graduate expansion totals about $17 million across the campus. So, it is not insignificant money.”
Of the money provided by the ministry for master’s and PhD students, the majority of the money goes to the faculties ($11,250 for every master’s student and $21,500 per PhD student). The funding is often used for scholarships and to support graduate program growth through staff and teaching assistant positions.
As of the Nov. 1 head count, Miller says “we were actually in a really good place in terms of PhD enrolments. We were pretty much on target with what the faculties had set as their enrolment plans … master’s numbers were a bit low.”
There are currently 2,648 master’s students (2,240 domestic) and 1,771 doctoral students (1,345 domestic) at Western.
Although these numbers are low, Miller is not concerned.
Western has a lot of one-year master’s programs, which are easier to recruit for than four-year PhD programs which require a longer commitment, she says. As well, PhD students are funded at a higher rate, making it more critical to meet these targets.
Faculties are being encouraged to get creative and to consider the development of new, innovative graduate programs.
To meet funding targets, the university must bring in about 260 new domestic PhD students each year. Although desirable to have a balance of international students in graduate programs, the ministry does not provide funding for them.
Based on feedback from a recent survey, Western is abandoning the large showcase or open house graduate recruitment initiatives in favour of a targeted faculty and program recruitment.
The university is also increasing its presence at conferences where senior undergraduates will be attending.
“We do need to take it seriously because this is the only real, guaranteed money that we have coming from the ministry for the next couple of years so we don’t want to miss this opportunity. But we can use this to our advantage and to introduce programs in novel areas that really do make us stand out from other universities,” says Miller.
