Wrestling with an estimated 2012– 2013 deficit of $9.8 billion, the minority Liberal government of Ontario tabled a May budget politically positioned to address that problem, while still currying needed NDP favour in order to pass.

The document contained little new for post-secondary education in the province, with funding for universities continuing as outlined in last year’s budget.

While new enrolment will be accommodated with a 1.9 per cent boost, the “increase” is largely negated by cuts to operating funds which remove $121 million from institution budgets between 2012 and 2014, according to analysis by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations.

The result is an overall decline in per-student funding.

“Ontario already has the worst level of per-student funding in Canada, and this budget continues this trend,” said OCUFA president Constance Adamson.

Noting that increased per-student funding would also help control rising tuition fees, Adamson said “austerity” budgets generally fail to promote economic growth, while investments in universities produce the opposite effect.

“We’re worried that the narrow focus on reducing the provincial deficit is crowding out other priorities equally important to Ontarians. Investment in universities helps reduce the deficit by stimulating economic growth and building a strong society,” she said.

Ontario post-secondary tuition fees will be allowed to increase by three to five per cent each year for the next four, said Sarah Jayne King, chairperson of the Canadian Fed­eration of Students-Ontario, and combined with institution operating cuts, it means that public funding now accounts for less than half of college and university operating budgets.

“Government underfunding and eight years of tuition fee increases have offloaded the bulk of the cost of college and university education onto students and their families,” King said. “Over the past decade, our public colleges and universities have been quietly privatized, and increasingly institutions are being forced to open their doors to private interests.”

The budget also contained a new investment of $295 million over two years for the government’s Youth Jobs Strategy, which includes $195 million to help Ontario young people find work primarily through hiring incentives to employers.

However, the strategy will also “increase commercial and private influence at colleges and universities, including the expansion of ‘On Campus Accelerator Centres,’ which allow large businesses to use public resources for private gain,” according to King.

“While students welcome investments to address youth unemployment, a real strategy for youth must address the high cost of tuition fees and record high levels of student debt,” she said.

The budget document states that part of the youth jobs strategy funds “will support entrepreneurs,” on campus, largely through the “accelerator centres,” but provides almost no details on how the centres will be established, organized and funded.