By Sophie Wallace

Some members of Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU)’s faculties believe more funds from the upcoming 2026-27 budget should be allocated towards reducing class sizes to improve student experience.

At the university’s Budget Town Hall on March 2, staff and students were given the opportunity to ask questions about the upcoming budget. TMU president Mohamed Lachemi, provost and vice-president academic Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano and vice-provost of university planning Kimberley McCausland led the meeting.

In anonymous feedback during the meeting, multiple attendees wrote that TMU should focus on improving classrooms and student experience in the coming year.

According to data from the University Planning Office, the number of undergraduate students enrolled at TMU has risen by about 3.7 per cent over the past five years.

Jacqui Gingras, a sociology professor at TMU and member of the Toronto Metropolitan Faculty Association (TFA), thinks TMU should expand resources for faculty.

“Learning is very tightly tied to a sense of belonging…being able to connect with your professor”

Gingras said some of her liberal studies classes have grown from 60 students to over 100 since she began teaching. CSOC 808: Sociology of Food and Eating, she said, is one of her most popular classes with 170 students.

“Learning is very tightly tied to a sense of belonging, feeling seen, feeling heard, being able to ask questions, being able to connect with your professor. And when you walk into a room of even over 100 people, that feeling instantly is diminished, unless people are working really hard to disrupt that,” she said.

She added that hiring more faculty to support smaller class sizes would help prevent students from feeling “anonymous” and “a number.”

Wayne Smith, a hospitality and tourism professor at TMU, said with bigger classes, instructors need to be more creative with their teaching methods. He said he has noticed a reduction in resources over the past decade.

“You can only do more with less for so long,” said Smith.

In an email to The Eyeopener, TMU facilities management and development said, “the overall classroom utilization rate at TMU was close to 80 per cent in Fall 2025 for daytime from Monday to Friday.”

They added that this indicates the university uses their space efficiently, but there is little flexibility for adjustments when needed.

“You can only do more with less for so long”

The university generally sets aside $300,000 every year to update classrooms, including replacement of furniture and renovations, read the email.

Students have mixed views on the importance of small class sizes. Mansha Kashyap, a first-year psychology student, said her lectures usually have between 70-100 students. She takes Spanish as an elective, a course she says has roughly 20 to 35 students.

“I think having a larger class size makes it a little bit harder to ask the professor for help”

“The only professor that I would say knows me is my professor in my [Spanish] class,” she said. “It definitely helps with my performance in class as well.”

However, Kashyap said there are benefits to larger class sizes too.

“I do like going to my psychology class more because then I don’t have that pressure of, ‘oh, I have to perform’.”

Ami Holenghan is a first-year student transferring to media production this fall, after a year in performance: acting. Holengan’s acting program had a cohort of 24 students, but he has taken electives in history and radio and television arts where classes were larger.

“I think having a larger class size makes it a little bit harder to ask the professor for help,” he said.

In an interview with The Eye, Lachemi said, “evidence shows that the design of the learning experience is often much more important than the absolute number of students in the room.”

According to Lachemi, the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at TMU provides a number of resources and workshops to support faculty and “strong student outcomes,” even in large courses.

“It definitely helps with my performance in class…”

According to McCausland’s presentation at the town hall, the 2026-27 budget would be supported by the $6.4 billion investment in post-secondary institutions across Ontario over the next four years. This also comes with the incoming two per cent tuition rise and planned cuts to Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) grants, as previously reported by The Eye.

The final figures for TMU’s 2026-27 budget will be published in April.