TORONTO - Concerted efforts by the McGuinty government to improve post-secondary education in Ontario appear to be largely unappreciated by the public.

In fact, a provincewide poll finds more than one-quarter of those asked believe the quality has declined under the Liberals, while fewer than one in 10 see any improvement.

Prof. Mark Langer, president of the organization that speaks for university faculty, said he was taken aback by the finding.

"I was appalled when I read that," Langer said.

"The Liberals have laboured mightily to restore funding and they seem to be getting very little traction from doing that ... very little public recognition."

The Feedback Research survey, slated for release this week, also suggests the Liberal government's performance on post-secondary education is viewed barely more favourably than the previous Conservative government's record.

Twenty-seven per cent said the Liberals under Premier Dalton McGuinty, who took office in 2003, had done better than the Tories under former Conservative premier Mike Harris. Twenty three per cent rated the Liberal performance worse.

"One would have thought the public would be paying closer attention to what the McGuinty government has been doing," said Langer, president of the Ontario Confederation of Faculty Associations.

"They seem to have been victims of their own success."

Figures show the Liberals have almost doubled the number of dollars going into post-secondary education.

At the same time, a concerted effort to raise the percentage of high school grads who go on to college or university has resulted in many more students in the system.

The result is that Ontario lags in funding per student -- students pay more for tuition in Ontario than elsewhere in Canada.

According to the poll, two-thirds of those asked said tuition was too high, with one in four suggesting fee levels were about right.

Concerns about cost were significantly higher among lower-income respondents, the poll indicates.

Nora Loreto, with the Canadian Federation of Students, said students are suffering from sticker shock.

Since 2006, most programs have seen tuition hikes of four to five per cent annually, and as much as eight per cent per year for deregulated programs such as law and medicine, she said.

Loreto said fees have risen more sharply under McGuinty, who faces an election campaign this fall, than under Harris.

"The (Liberals') record did include not reversing any of the bad policy in terms of fees that the previous government made," Loreto said.

"They're really battling a PR nightmare when you've got students facing the cost of education increasing."

Ontario's ratio of students to professors remains the highest in the country but survey respondents did not appear to share persistent concerns among both faculty and students about the larger class sizes.

In fact, just 12 per cent saw the issue as a problem, while three-quarters of those said schools were simply using their resources more efficiently.

The poll of 1,800 people in Ontario was done in mid-January for the faculty associations and student federation. It is said to be accurate within 2.9 percentage points 19 times out of 20.