The creation of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), a little over 50 years ago, was the result of mobilizations for access to public, French-speaking and democratic higher education. This creation was a victory won against the status quo and the monopoly of established universities, which made them the preserve of the elites. Since then, UQAM has defended this mission against all odds and has established itself as a great university, recognized for the innovative and interdisciplinary character of its programs, institutes and research teams, its unique role in the intellectual life of Quebec, spearheads environmental studies, feminist studies, artistic and literary creation, etc.
For fifty years, UQAM has been the black sheep of the university network, feared for the intensity of its democratic life, perpetually underfunded and prevented from developing in jealously defended fields, including health. The so-called “historic” methods of funding, used from 1969 to 1999, structurally disadvantaged UQAM.
Those related to the calculation of student numbers, used since as the main measure, seemed more neutral, but they also disadvantaged the main fields of training at UQAM, without taking into account the mission of the latter, which leads it to have a significantly higher proportion of first-generation students or student parents than other Montreal universities, with more significant challenges to overcome. It is much easier to train and graduate a student whose parents both have a master’s or doctoral degree and who financially support their child than a student whose parents have not had access to higher education. And yet, it is an equally great gain for Quebec society as a whole.
A failed mission
In addition to the reform of funding methods, in the early 2000s there was chronic underfunding of real estate expenditures accompanied by “public-private partnership” projects which led the management of UQAM at the time to headlong into the abyss of Îlot Voyageur, whose disastrous consequences UQAM is still suffering, giving valuable lessons to other universities, whose new campuses, sprouting up like mushrooms, have since been generously funded by Quebec, even when these campuses were erected two or three metro stations from UQAM, as for HEC in downtown Montreal.
Finally, a new overhaul, in 2018, definitively launched Quebec universities into international competition, deregulating tuition fees for all countries except Belgium and France. This opened up to universities a considerable source of funding, but very unevenly distributed and whose inequality was highly predictable, for the benefit of English-speaking universities: thus McGill University and Concordia University respectively obtained $166 million and $105 million $ in 2021-2022, compared to $12.8 million at UQAM for tuition fees for so-called “deregulated” students. This while UQAM’s overall budget was $588 million.
By letting the “global university market” govern their funding, the government has radically transformed the very logic of Quebec universities. These now have every interest in putting themselves at the service of the transnational elites, whose working language is English, rather than at the service of the Quebec population. This obviously undermines the fundamental mission of UQAM.
To make matters worse, the government grants generous tax credits to philanthropists who donate millions to universities, so that when McGill raises a billion in its major fundraising campaign, Quebec indirectly invests $500 million, while UQAM struggles to exceed $119 million in its major campaign, which results for Quebec in an indirect contribution of barely $55 million, for a difference of ten to one, while the calculation of the number of FTEs (full-time student equivalent) was 26 201 for McGill in 2020-2021 against 24,522 for UQAM.
Is that all ? No. Because to these funding measures, Quebec has added in recent years several “targeted” categories, targeting very specific fields in training and research (engineering and nursing sciences, for example), fields which exclude most of the disciplines taught at UQAM.
A “perfect storm”
This list is certainly tiresome, but an unequivocal picture emerges: UQAM has been underfunded and poorly funded for more than 50 years, to the detriment of its mission, that of being a great French-speaking university, flagship of the network of the Université du Québec, dedicated to accessibility to higher education for first-generation French-speaking university students, part-time students, student parents, etc.
However, these years of underfunding are combined with a “perfect storm” threatening UQAM more than any other Quebec university, that of the conjunction of the pandemic, weakening the most disadvantaged students; the sharp fall in the unemployment rate, encouraging potential first-generation students to embark on the job market instead, at the risk of seeing the rest of their career taxed by this decision; the soaring cost of housing, hitting the categories of students enrolling at UQAM more strongly; and the general decline in enrollment in the humanities and social sciences, across North America, if not the world. All of this led to a marked drop in enrollment, with serious effects on UQAM’s funding.
UQAM is thus threatened in its mission and in its sustainability, at the very moment when it would be more important than ever to have a solid French-speaking university institution in the heart of Montreal, in this Latin Quarter which is itself going through a deep crisis of devitalization. .
For a very rare time, people intervene these days in the media to come to the defense of UQAM, as a great French-speaking university. This while a race for the rectorship is taking place, which encourages us to reflect on the future of this university, our university, a university that we cherish and defend, for the ideal that it has embodied on a daily basis for 50 years: that of democratization of knowledge, at the service of the public, in French.
This mission is that of UQAM, it is also ours, that of the employees and retirees, students and graduates of UQAM, that of the friends of UQAM.
We must defend UQAM, defend this mission, and that is why we invite the government to make a formal and concrete commitment to defend UQAM and its mission.
* The full list of signatories is available here.