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Montreal, September 29, 2008 - The Conference of Rectors and Principals of Quebec Universities (CREPUQ) is calling on the leaders of the federal political parties to make concrete commitments to increase investment in higher education as part of their current election campaign promises.

The cost of research

Quebec universities are particularly concerned with the issue of the institutional cost of university research (also termed indirect costs). The federal government currently finances these indirect costs at a level that represents 24% of the direct costs, a proportion that is significantly less than the actual cost and lower than the international standard. The federal envelope should be raised to at least a 40% research cost recovery rate for every university on the federal research funds they receive.

Two kinds of costs are involved in university research:

• Direct costs involve salaries for researchers and their teams, equipment and materials, travel and publication costs. These direct costs are subsidized federally by the three research councils and by targeted programs such as Genome Canada;
• Institutional costs typically involve laboratory maintenance, libraries, information technology, administration, grant management, intellectual property management and knowledge transfer as well as the costs involved in managing security and overseeing sound ethical practices.

“Under funding institutional research costs hamstrings university research productivity,” says CREPUQ president Heather Munroe-Blum, principal and vice chancellor of McGill University.

“Insufficient funding of indirect research costs not only hinders research, but it also makes research and teaching compete for funding, when the two functions are complementary and mutually supportive. It is crucial that our federal government finance the real institutional costs of university research if Quebec universities are to maintain their current levels of research excellence,” Munroe-Blum says.

Increased budgets for the subsidizing councils

Successive federal governments have made considerable research investment in the last decade, and the successes speak for themselves. Quebec universities are asking the federal parties to increase the budgets of subsidizing agencies and provide continued financing of research across the full range of disciplines.

Increased transfer payments for post secondary education

A study by the Association of Colleges and Universities of Canada (AUCC) shows that in 2006-2007 publicly-funded US universities and colleges received $8,000 Cdn per student more than their Canadian counterparts. As the AUCC pointed out: “That advantage contributes to their ability to enhance the quality of the learning environment, in turn contributing to a more productive workforce. The UK and Australia have begun to close per-student funding gaps with their American counterparts by increasing their investments in higher education and creating more sustainable funding mechanisms. Canadian governments will similarly need to take action over time to address the per-student funding gap with the US in order to create the kind of workforce Canada will require to drive economic growth and prosperity into the future.”

Quebec universities are in a precarious financial position, and the federal government must increase transfer payments for post secondary education in order to restore funding to previous levels and to provide for new needs of the universities. At stake is maintaining teaching and research quality and allowing our universities to compete with the best in the world.

CREPUQ calls on the federal political parties to take a stance on these three important issues and their impact on the future of Quebec universities.

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For information:
Daniel Zizian
Director general
514-288-8524 p. 201