Precarious college faculty: the silenced majority

For this entry I welcome a guest writer who, as a part-time college professor, brings a very important perspective.  In the coming months, along with further reports on my visits to Ontario colleges, there will be other contributions from guest authors, with the intention of presenting several different views on college education today...

I am an Ontario college professor. I have been teaching in the college system for over 20 years. I have a post-graduate degree and good standing in my profession. But, I am a precarious worker.

For the entire time that I have worked as a college teacher, I have been on a part-time contract. I am in the part-time category called, Partial-Load, which means that I am, very luckily, part of the faculty union.  But, I still do not have the most basic protection, job security.

What does this mean? My teaching contract lasts one term only. So, when I start teaching in September I never know if I will still have a job in January. If I am teaching in the spring term, I never know if I will have a job the following September.

If I raise a complaint of any kind about my working conditions, about harassment, or if I get on the wrong side of my boss: the dean or associate dean; I risk not getting another contract--without any explanation.

This is why I am must write anonymously. I do not have a voice in my workplace.

The surprising fact is that I am now in the majority. 70% of faculty in my college are precarious contract workers. I share this situation not only with the faculty, but also with support workers in the colleges, many who are also part-time, precarious workers.

The number of students accepted in our colleges is rising steadily, a 53% increase in the last decade. During the same period, the number of full-time faculty with full job protection has actually decreased by 22%. The colleges are hiring more precarious workers instead of creating good, stable jobs. Why? We have been told, in this age of austerity, that it is a lack of money.

My college currently has a surplus of over $225 million. Money is clearly not the problem. And clearly the political will is not there to create good jobs.

Ontario college faculty and support workers are both entering the next round of bargaining with our employer, the College Council.  

In the last round of bargaining my union was able to win a small gain on the issue of job security. Partial-Load faculty who have worked more than two years experience who are not rehired to teach the courses they previous taught can fight this through the union grievance process. This is a small but significant step.

This round of bargaining college faculty and support workers will need to stand together to continue fight for better jobs and to maintain quality education.

Cambrian College: Back to the North!

On Halloween day I drove back up to Sudbury to visit with faculty at Cambrian, the other college that calls the city home.  The professors, counselors and librarians at Cambrian are represented by President Carolyn Gaunt and the stewards of OPSEU Local 655. 

Carolyn Gaunt - a most memorable local president

With over 4,000 full time students, Cambrian is the largest of Ontario's northern colleges.  Originally, Cambrian had campuses in Sudbury, North Bay and Sault St. Marie, but in the 1970s North bay and Sault became independent colleges in their own right - Canadore College and Sault College.  In 1995, the french language programs at Cambrian were transfered to the newly created College Boreal.

During an LEC meeting, the stewards at Cambrian discussed a host of pressures that they are experiencing as programs are rationalized.  Like most colleges, a primary challenge at Cambrian concerns the declining number of full time faculty.  Local 655 currently has 182 full time members, approximately 35 partial load, and over 200 part time.  This ratio of full time to part time faculty is better than at many colleges, but full time numbers continue to shrink as retirements aren't replaced.

The impacts of management cost-cutting are apparent in several other areas.  Stewards in the trades describe classes in which students are doubled up on machines designed for a single student to learn on.  Apart from the health and safety flags this raises, one steward expressed his concern for student learning: "they're not paying for half an education, so why do they put up with this?"   Increasing class sizes and mandatory online courses were also mentioned as negatively impacting student learning.  However, without faculty academic freedom, professors, counselors and librarians are finding it difficult to be advocates for academic standards.  Faculty that complain can face serious repercussions, including termination, and college student associations tend not to get involved in academic issues.  At the end of the day then, who is speaking up for students?

Near the end of our discussion, Cambrian faculty switched to the big picture, and asked where the current trajectory of college education is taking us.  If it's business as usual, they argued, the future looks like a largely part-time academic workforce, university-sized classes, mostly online courses, and an ever-expanding army of administrators.  All the while, students will keep paying higher tuition, and getting less in return. 

Only by taking control over our academic work can faculty reverse a management-driven austerity agenda, and refocus on the raison d'etre of college education - the relationship between student and faculty in the classroom.  Carolyn Gaunt summed up what this change could mean for our students, noting: "When you think back to your own time in college, do you remember your favourite professors, or do you remember your VP Finance?"

I sure know who I remember...

In Transition at Sheridan College

In late October I took a short trip down the road from my home in Hamilton to visit Sheridan College.  Sheridan is one of the larger community colleges, with just over 17,000 full time students.  The College has an international reputation as a centre for excellence in media and animation, a status gained by the hard work of committed faculty.  President Jack Urowitz and the stewards of OPSEU Local 244 represent faculty at Sheridan, and over lunch and an LEC meeting we talked about the challenges they face as their college transforms into a university.



Sheridan's Hazel McCallion building

The announcement that Sheridan was moving toward university status was made by College president Jeff Zabutsky in 2012.  Reasons cited for the transition were that Sheridan students are demanding more degree programs, and that the degrees now being offered weren't being given full consideration by other universities. The provincial government has indicated it wants to open three more universities in Ontario focused on undergraduate education, and Sheridan sees itself as one of them.

Sheridan's transition serves to highlight faculty concerns over academic freedom and educational standards.  In the first place, the fact that Sheridan degrees weren't being seen as equivalent to university degrees indicates that college professors' lack of academic freedom has a direct impact on how their work is perceived outside of the system.  This is a disservice to the world-class education that professors at Sheridan College are already providing, and it also shows that full recognition of this work only comes when faculty have the same level of academic freedom their university peers possess.

Sheridan's transition also reveals a tension between academic and practical knowledge, and between university credentials and workplace experience.  Local 244 members are concerned that an integrated theoretical and practical model of education is being threatened by the transition.  The fear is that professors teaching in more skills-based programs, or those with extensive industry experience instead of academic training, will be marginalized.  Instead, faculty argue that academic freedom - the right of professors to teach according to their expertise and to be openly critical of their institution - are as important for professors in practical programs as for those teaching more academic courses.

Ultimately, academic freedom is about the integrity and quality of the educational process. Our society sees fit to support these goals in relation to classical university-based subjects like philosophy, social science, and humanities.  However, are these standards any less important for professors training airplane mechanics, I.T. specialists, or electricians?  Would Canadians want to know that the nurse looking after their sick relative was trained to an academic standard determined by full-time, credentialed professors, or by managers with no relevant qualifications, and a mandate to offer the cheapest possible education?

According to the college president, Sheridan is increasing the number of full time faculty and enacting academic freedom, including a senate structure, in order to increase the quality of the degrees it offers.  These standards for ensuring the rigor of university education are laudable, but they should apply equally to Ontario's colleges.

Life at Lambton

Lambton College is in my hometown of Sarnia, and I was especially looking forward to visiting the faculty there and listening to their experiences.  I was finally able to make the trip in late October, and spent an incredibly informative day with Local President Baiba Butkus and the officers and stewards of OPSEU 125.

President Baiba Butkus, left, and LEC members

Lambton is one of the smaller community colleges, with approximately 2,700 full time students, and 125 full time faculty.  Like most colleges, Lambton has seen the increasing use of part-time faculty, and the union has had to file grievances to maintain full time staffing levels.

A change that has profoundly affected professors at Lambton is the College's new practice of splitting up the theoretical and practical instruction that has traditionally been done by a single professor.  Management's goal is clearly cost-saving, as lab, studio, or other practical student contact is being given to lower-paid technicians.  Professors are then relegated to teaching theory courses, and are no longer able to globally evaluate the performance of students.

The fissuring of theoretical and practical instruction strikes at the heart of what makes the community college system unique - an educational environment in which theory and application are closely integrated, and in which students are able to learn directly from experts in the field.  Increasingly, professors are responsible for assigning student grades without ever observing them in practical situations.  Given this, is it any wonder they're questioning how reliable the evaluations are?

Technology Professor Khaled Nigim

Other changes are eroding the hands-on, interactive nature of education at Lambton, including he growing practice of putting core courses online, and expanding the size of face to face classes.  As with every other faculty group I have spoken to, professors at Lambton describe consistent student complaints about online learning, and equally consistent management indifference to these concerns.

In fact, management at Lambton has embraced a particularly tech-heavy vision of college education that they call "mobile learning".  The idea is that students will regularly use mobile devices - phones and tablets - in all aspects of their education.  To this end professors are being pressured to use i-pads, regardless of whether the technology is actually useful in a given class.  Of course, along with the vision of "mobile learning" comes lucrative corporate deals for hardware, software, and e-textbooks. 

Lambton College's vision for "mobile learning" speaks to the wider debate of how technology is used in education today.  On one side of this debate is the undeniable power that technology has to enhance learning and productivity, and also the inescapable need to be technologically proficient in today's economy.  On the other side of the debate are critical voices who argue that high-tech isn't always better, that mobile gadgets can be as distracting as they are helpful, and that corporate profit is driving the field more than sound pedagogy.

As I've said before in this blog, no professor I've spoken with is "anti-technology".  Heck, even I typed this blog entry on my i-pad and took the pictures with my smart-phone.  However, I also agree with professors concerned about an uncritical rush to bring every new technological trinket into the post-secondary learning environment.  Student and faculty experiences are already revealing the limitations, as well as possible strengths, of learning technologies.  For this reason it is critically important that professors be the ones to decide, based on research and experience, when and how technology is used.

Off to St. Clair College

Hot on the heels of my meeting with the members of Local 350 at Georgian College, I drove west to Windsor, Ontario, to meet with faculty at St. Clair College.  St. Clair is a mid-sized college, with approximately 8,600 full time students spread across three campuses.  Two of the campuses are in Windsor, and one is in Chatham.

The professors of St. Clair are represented by OPSEU Local 138.  I was able to meet with Local President Bernie Nawrocki at the Windsor campus of St. Clair, and then sat in on an LEC dinner meeting later in the evening.

In my meeting with the officers and stewards of Local 138, I heard about the increased workload being experienced by professors, and the ways in which "extras" keep getting added on to already maxed-out schedules.  Faculty are regularly being asked to do program review work, recruitment, marketing and committee work, and all of it on a volunteer basis.  When combined with the normal demands of a full teaching load, and the new demands of online learning management systems (LMS), faculty are starting to feel the pressure.

The high-stress environment facing professors is contributing to more strained workplace relations , and as a result the officers of Local 138 have been spending considerable time managing grievances concerning bullying and harassment.  This is a concern expressed by several colleges I've visited so far, and speaks to the broader impact on faculty, students, and support staff when a collegial environment focused on education turns into a competitive one focused on cost-cutting.

In our meeting, the faculty at St. Clair expressed both a sincere belief in the uniqueness and importance of the college system, and also a fear that its integrity was being threatened.  With fewer and fewer full time professors, counselors and librarians, and less faculty control over academic decision-making, our members are rightly asking what the ultimate result will be...

Talking Quality Education at Georgian College

In mid October I visited the campus of Georgian College in Barrie.  The professors, counselors and librarians of Georgian are represented by the hard-working team of Local 350, led by president Terry Heittola, vice president Andrea Lovring, chief steward Anita Arvast, treasurer Lydia Robertson, and communications officer Jason Murphy.  Georgian has about 272 full time professors, and this number reflects the tireless work of the Local in advocating for full time hires.  Even with the Local's success at securing new hires, ensuring adequate staffing is becoming increasingly difficult at Georgian, and overall about 70% of professors are now either part time or partial load.

Terry Heittola

Terry and his team have managed to balance good labour relations with effective representation of their members' interests.  However, despite a functional relationship between management and the union, professors at Georgian are still experiencing many of the same pressures affecting their colleagues system-wide.

Online learning is now being enforced by the Georgian administration, leading professors to voice the same concerns as their peers at Mohawk College.  Students don't like being forced to take online and "blended" courses.  They consider it to be lower quality education for the same price, and complain to the faculty forced to teach online courses.  As with many colleges, it is clear that online education at Georgian is being pushed far beyond its natural scope of use.  Used correctly, online learning can improve access to education for students who can't travel to campus or who's schedules demand a high degree of flexibility.  However, when used as an "across the board" cost-cutting measure, it actually disadvantages most students.  Ultimately, without faculty determining how this delivery method is used, an accessibility technology ends up having an anti-access effect.

The online strategy being pursued by Georgian management is also contradicted by a parallel push for student retention.  The Colleges say that using "early alert" protocols to identify students who need extra academic help is about providing better education.  However, while the college simultaneously increases class sizes, puts courses online for no academic reason, and doesn't give faculty enough time to actually provide the extra help that struggling students need, management's stated goals and observed outcomes fail to add up.  Instead, "retention" seems more and more like a cynical attempt to maximize tuition dollars, not to improve access to quality education.

The officers of Local 350 are clearly committed to their work, to education, and to the students they teach.  At the end of our meeting chief steward Anita Avrast stated it plainly: "Education is not a business".  I couldn't agree more, and that's why professors should have the academic freedom they need to put quality and student success back at the heart of the Ontario college system.

Whats up at Mohawk College?

Mohawk College, in Hamilton, is where I teach as a professor of social sciences.  Mohawk faculty, counselors and librarians are represented by the committed officers and stewards of OPSEU Local 240, and new president Geoff Ondercin-Bourne.  It's fortunate that faculty at Mohawk have such a strong team, because of late the college administration has made things particularly interesting.

Geoff Ondercin Bourne, hard at work

 Since president Rob MacIssac took over the top administrative job at Mohawk, a number of changes have occurred.  A welcome modernization of Mohawk's primary campus at Fennell avenue was undertaken, and is now in its last stages.  The new facilities are great, but how have changes at Mohawk impacted the two groups who form the core of the college's activities - students and faculty?

The answer is decidedly mixed.  While Mohawk's investment in infrastructure has helped boost its KPI scores, it has simultaneously pursued an online education strategy that is by far the most autocratic and undifferentiated in the Ontario college system.  This strategy has received significant push-back from both students and faculty, but to date none of this critical feedback has been considered by management.

Chief Steward Ann Bennet

Since 2008, Mohawk had focused on the development of online education as part of its strategic plan.  In the following years upper management began putting forward a number of targets for how many of the college's courses would be either fully online, or "blended", in which some percentage of face to face class time would be replaced by online time.  While faculty and students well appreciated the potential of online learning in certain situations, several concerns were raised about making sure that this form of delivery was used when pedagogically appropriate, and when it was in the best interests of student success.  Ultimately, professors argued that the question of whether to deliver a course online should be based on academic criteria, and decided by faculty.

In 2011, in response to growing concerns about management's push toward online education in a top-down and "across the board" manner, Local 240's Political Action Committee (PAC) hosted a focus group for students and faculty to talk openly together about online learning.  The Local also did a rigorous survey of just under 900 students, and produced a Report on Online Learning from the survey and focus group results. 

The focus groups revealed that faculty had considerable reservations about the academic quality of online education, and both the survey and focus groups showed that a majority of students preferred face to face over online instruction.  Concerns were particularly raised about how online learning affects access based on language, socioeconomic status, and disability.  These concerns were also prominent in the academic literature on online education.

Instead of considering the findings in the Local 240 report, in 2012 Mohawk management doubled-down on its previous online learning targets, and decreed that all courses taught at the college would lose 1 hour of face to face class time, to be replaced by an hour fully online.  The decree completely contradicted the Report on Online Learning's recommendations, and revealed just how little concerns about student success and faculty academic expertise factor into management decision-making.  With no ability to control the way in which online learning is implemented, or to advocate for their students, Mohawk professors have come to realize just how serious a lack of academic freedom is.

I'll further explore the complex issue of online education in my next entry...

Off to Algonquin!

On a beautiful day in early October I traveled back to Ottawa to meet with members of the other college that calls the city home: Algonquin.  The professors, counselors and librarians of Algonquin college are represented by the hard-working executive of OPSEU Local 415.  I was able to meet with President Patrick Kennedy, Chief Steward J.P. Lamarche, 1st Vice President Jack Wilson, 2nd Vice President Dave Haley, and Treasurer Shawn Pentecost, before I met with stewards in a local executive committee (LEC) meeting.

JP Lamarche (left) and Patrick Kennedy

Algonquin is one of the larger colleges in Ontario, with over 19,000 full time students.  The majority of students and programs are housed at the Woodroffe campus in Ottawa, with two smaller campuses located in Perth and Pembroke. With a large student population, Algonquin has an equally large number of professors, including 580 full time faculty.  Like other colleges though, part-time faculty now outnumber full time 3 to 1, and Algonquin maintains over 1,600 part-time and sessional professors.

The ratio of part time to full time professors at Algonquin is extreme, but would be even worse if not for the constant pressure of Local 415.  Through utilizing staffing grievances, the Local has been able to force the hiring of full-time professors.  The current faculty Collective Agreement (CA) says that College management has to prefer the hiring of full time over part time.  When the college system was founded this was how hiring worked, but today it takes constant vigilance and hard work on behalf of locals like 415 to keep the complement of full time professors from dwindling even further.  Colleges like Algonquin are a stark example of how the reasonable use of part-time faculty for operational flexibility has transformed into a  management cost-cutting strategy that places enormous pressure on full-time members and erodes the quality of education.

Another issue facing professors at Algonquin is a push from management to create more hybrid and fully online courses.  The cost-cutting imperative behind online learning is clear, with the possibility of larger class sizes, and the ability of managers to take online materials developed by full time faculty, and then turn the courses over to part timers.  A few years ago this happened to an Algonquin nursing professor who recorded her lectures at the behest of management, then saw her course, and her recorded lectures, taken from her and delivered by part-time faculty.

A final irony noted by Local 415 officers is that the majority of students don't prefer online learning, and instead want their instruction to be in a traditional,  classroom environment.  Students at Algonquin even expressed their distaste for online learning to their Student Association, and to management, but to date their resistance has had little impact on college policy.

This blatant disregard by college management to both student and faculty concerns about online learning is something that characterizes my next visit - to Mohawk College in Hamilton...

Meeting With Members at Conestoga College

On October 9th I traveled to the Kitchener campus of Conestoga College to meet with President Lana Lee Hardacre and members of OPSEU Local 237.

Lana Lee Hardacre

Conestoga is a medium-sized college with approximately 9,000 full-time students.  It is also one of the first institutions in the Ontario college system, being established in 1967. Conestoga operates seven different campuses and offers a wide array of programs, including collaborative degree nursing, engineering, architecture, and computer technology.

In my meeting with the officers of Local 237, they described a now-familiar story of college management squeezing every bit of revenue out of operations, while simultaneously cutting costs at every turn.  This funding pressure manifests in growing class sizes in the college's apprenticeship programs.  In several trades programs, classes used to be capped at 24 students, and now have climbed to 42.  In some machining classes, where the past practice has been a maximum of 15 students, classes of up to 37 are now common.

While these numbers may seem low when compared to massive university lecture theatres crammed with hundreds of students, skilled-trades classes involve intensive, hands-on education using potentially dangerous machinery.  The 24 and 15 student limits were in place to ensure two important outcomes: quality of instruction and student safety.  Now that class sizes are being far exceeded, faculty have serious concerns over both outcomes.

Another cost-cutting measure that is affecting quality education is that professors in skilled trades are being replaced with technicians.  Labs that used to be taught by professors are now being staffed with technicians who can't evaluate student work.  This leads to a disconnect between a student's theoretical and practical instruction that again has professors worried about the quality of education students will receive.

Ontario's skilled trades build and maintain our province's infrastructure and drive our economy.  Given this sector's obvious importance, the public should be concerned when professors are being forced to cut corners and sacrifice both safety and quality for the financial bottom line.  Skimping on resources in the classroom makes even less sense when considering the management at Conestoga, who's numbers and salaries have been growing by leaps and bounds.  In 2012 Conestoga president John Tibbits alone took in over $409,000 in salary, after receiving an extremely generous 16% raise in 2011.  Clearly there's been no austerity in the president's office...

La Belle La Cite

On Friday, October 4th, I took the train to Ottawa, one of my favourite Canadian cities, to visit with the faculty at La Cite, Ontario's largest francophone college.  After lunch with locale 470 du SEFPO (OPSEU Local 470) President Benoit Dupuis, I had an engaging conversation with the local officers and stewards.


Local 470 President Benoit Dupuis

La Cite is a relatively recent addition to the Ontario college system, being founded in 1990.  It is a medium-size institution, with approximately 5,000 full-time students, and 300 full-time faculty.  The ratio of full-time to part-time faculty is 50-50, a bit below the system average, but creeping ever upward.

A significant change at La Cite has been a new college president taking over in 2010.  Since this change-over, and a more corporate management style, there has been a definite shift in labour relations.  Chief Grievance officer Pierre St.-Gelais noted that from April of 2011 to September 2013, the union has filed six times the number of grievances it had filed in the previous fifteen years.

Chief Grievance Officer Pierre St.-Gelais

Another issue facing the professors at La Cite has been increasing class sizes.  Class enrolments were once capped by college administration based on "academic quality".  However, the caps have now been removed, as has any mention of academic quality being linked to class size.

As La Cite's priorities have shifted from academic quality to corporate promotion and marketing, their scores on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have been increasing.  KPIs are student satisfaction surveys used across the college system in the increasingly competitive battle for students.

The current focus on KPIs reflects a customer-service approach to college education, in which attracting students and maintaining them at all costs has come to eclipse an educational approach based on high academic standards and rigorous training.  High KPI scores and swelling enrolments may lead to healthy management bonuses, but Local 470's officers noted that employers on college-industry committees are expressing concerns.  Could it be that larger class sizes, fewer full-time faculty and reduced face-to-face instruction are producing college graduates that are less prepared for the workplace?

A Visit to Humber College

On Thursday, October 3rd I paid a visit to Humber College, another large Toronto-based institution with over 27,000 full time students.  The professors of Humber are led by President Orville Getz and the hard-working team of OPSEU Local 562.

As with most of the colleges I've visited to date, Humber's North Campus was in the midst of extensive renovations.  New buildings have been appearing across the college system, in many cases reflecting badly needed upgrades and expanded capacity.  Modern facilities are great, but has this investment been matched in the classroom?

Expansion at Humber's North Campus

Unfortunately, faculty at Humber have instead seen class sizes balloon from an average of 40 - 45 students, up to 75 - 100 students.  At the same time the College has been keeping a tight cap on full-time hiring.  At the time of our meeting, Local 562 had 595 full time faculty, 600 partial-load, and an equal number of part-time.  Similar to the system average, over 2/3 of the education delivered at Humber is by non-full time professors.

Another powerful challenge to the members of Local 562 has been management's increasing control over academic decisions.  Depending on the area, managers are developing new curriculum and courses, writing course outlines, and determining evaluations.  All of this is happening without meaningful input from college professors - the area experts.

The Officers of Local 562

Every day more faculty are being encouraged by their managers to switch to less time-consuming evaluation methods like in-process (where students are marked on a task as they perform it in class), or multiple-choice testing.  Pressure is increasing to remove more academically rigorous, but time-consuming evaluations such as essays and projects.

To faculty at Humber, academic freedom is not just an abstract term.  It deals with the ability of professors across the college system to control the terms of their work in the classroom, and to maintain the academic standards that will ensure student success...

In the Heart of the City: George Brown College

On October 2nd I arrived at George Brown College in downtown Toronto to visit the members of OPSEU Local  556.  President Tom Tomassi and chief steward J.P. Hornick led a General Membership Meeting (GMM), and the faculty in attendance provided a number of insightful perspectives.

President Tomassi calls the meeting to order

President Tomassi has taught in the college system for over 20 years, and has seen tremendous change.  He noted that George Brown college began operation with approximately 7,000 students and 700 full time faculty.  Today, there are over 25,000 students and approximately 520 full time faculty.  As it has with other faculty locals, the difficulty of teaching more students with fewer full time professors has taken its toll, and professors at George Brown are increasingly concerned about job security.



Faculty get into the issues during the GMM

While they have seen their full time numbers shrink, older members of the LEC have also seen the George Brown management team swell to over twice its original size. Instead of money being invested in the classroom, it has been increasingly spent on marketing, promotion, and management salaries.  Ultimately, these trends reflect a disturbing shift in priorities within the entire college system. 

At my next stop I speak with another large metro college - Humber - and hear about their faculty's struggle to maintain control over course content and evaluation...



An Evening at Niagara College

On Tuesday, October 1st I attended a general membership meeting (GMM) at Niagara College's campus in Welland.  Like many Colleges, Niagara's central campus has recently been re-built, and looks very modern.  Our GMM took place in a second floor board room with a beautiful view of the campus' naturalized landscape.  The room was beside the Health Science centre where Niagara's popular collaborative nursing program operates.

Before the GMM I had a chance to talk with members of Local 242's Executive.  President Sherri Rosen and Chief Steward Irene Sebastianelli weren't available  for this meeting, but Vice President Martin Devitt, Communications officer Debra Grobb, Treasurer Bonnie Martel, and stewards Mary Spehar, Shannon MacRae and Greg Smith were on hand to tell me about some challenges concerning teaching at Niagara College.

Martin and Mary in the Local 242 union office

One of the first topics of discussion was how management at Niagara have been issuing an increasing amount of illegal standard workload formulas (SWFs) that violate "hard ceilings" such as 47 hours per week of work maximum, no more than 44 hours per week for probationary employees, or no more than 12 hours between the start and end of a teaching day.  In addition, classroom overcrowding is common.  To Local 242, these violations are a result of intense cost-cutting pressures that see every employee workload maxed out, and every classroom space overfilled.  Managers hope that overblown enrollment numbers will drop before class starts, but this doesn't always happen.

Debra, Greg and Bonnie offering their insights

Professors also face constant management pressure to perform extra volunteer tasks that aren't included in their regular workload.  College open houses, community events, and committee work is common, and managers use these extra obligations as means of controlling faculty, rewarding "compliant" professors, and punishing those who don't volunteer for unpaid work (these teachers are generally considered "non-team players").  For partial load and part time faculty the pressure to do extra work is even greater.  With no job security, these members feel that they can't refuse management requests.

A final issue concerns managers usurping the academic decision-making of faculty.  Managers with no applicable credentials are doing course development, deciding on evaluations, and choosing textbooks.  The result is a top-down culture of micro-management, in which the professional expertise of faculty is being side-lined.  In one example, a program manager made it policy that professors had to give students as many opportunities to re-write tests and assignments as the students needed.  With these kinds of directives, how can faculty members possibly create a learning environment that is fair to all students, and that upholds academic and job skills standards?

This problem won't be resolved until faculty are able to define academic standards and to act as a counter-weight to college priorities of cost-cutting and profit maximizing. 

Until next visit,

Kevin

Northward ho! Visiting Boreal College in Sudbury, ON

In the afternoon on Thursday, September 26th I had the pleasure of meeting with the members of OPSEU Local 673 at Boreal College.  Boreal is located just outside of Sudbury, Ontario, and is surrounded by beautiful northern countryside.  It had been a few years since I'd been north of Barrie, and on the drive up I was captivated by the beautiful shield rock, birch trees, and early autumn colour.  Beautiful scenery makes a four and a half hour drive (almost) fly by.

Boreal was built relatively recently, in the late 1990s, and the main campus building at Sudbury looks modern and well maintained.  Against its natural backdrop, it looks picturesque.  According to Local 673 secretary Karl Aubry, the natural environment isn't just a beautiful frame for Boreal, but a very interactive part of the campus.  He told me stories of "campus bears" that are so tame and friendly that students and faculty hardly pay attention now when they amble into sight.

Boreal College - can you find the bear?

I met with the Boreal team at their 12:30pm Local Executive Committee meeting.  In attendance were President David Fasciano, VP Josée St-Jean, Chief Steward Jacques Babin, and Secretary Karl Aubry.  Stewards Hélène Coté and Michael Mainville were in attendance via speaker-phone.  Due to their work at Boreal's far northern satellite campuses, driving in to LECs is difficult for Michael and Hélène, necessitating trips of 4 to 6 hours.  This is one of the challenges faced by northern colleges, and in particular by Boreal.  As the sole francophone college in the north they service a vast area.  Although the number of full-time students is relatively low, with approximately 1,000 at the Sudbury campus, another 500 are spread throughout six satellite campuses and dozens of smaller "access centres".  

Local 673 President David Fasciano

Because of the distributed nature of Boreal's instruction, resources are constantly tight, and the pressures being felt by professors throughout the college system - to do more with less - are particularly acute.  The Local 673 executive explained that because providing post-secondary access to small francophone populations is more costly per-student than for the large city-based english-speaking colleges, the smaller communities lose out.  This is concerning given the original mandate of the colleges to ensure access, and to serve the unique employment and educational needs of their home communities.

Today's impoverished college funding model makes the normal challenges faced by a northern, francophone college especially difficult.  Under budget pressure Boreal has relied extensively on part-time professors to deliver its programs, with Local president David Fasciano noting that part-time faculty now outnumber full-time two to one.  Jacques noted that in programs that have been relying heavily on part-time faculty, that student complaints about the quality of education are rising.  The issue isn't that part-time teachers aren't qualified and committed.  The problem is that due to the refusal of management to offer them full-time jobs, or even better paid partial load work, part-time teachers tend to be transitory.  This high turnover rate, coupled with no time to develop, prepare, or evaluate the courses they are teaching,  makes it nearly impossible for part-time teachers to offer the same quality of instruction as full-time professors.  At the end of the day, as the Boreal Executive argue, it is students who are impacted the most.

VP Jose St.-Jean and Secretary Karl Aubry

Funding pressure has also led to challenges concerning academic freedom, and the ability of professors at Boreal to maintain the quality of education in the face of cost-cutting measures.  The executive related stories of professors who were told to use more multiple choice tests and cut out essays to deal with overwhelming workloads.  They also mentioned the difficult double-bind that full-time faculty are put in when managers direct them to hand over all of the course materials they have developed to part-time teachers.  In doing this, they are simply supporting management's refusal to hire full-time positions.  However, to not help our part-time teachers goes against the collegiality that the great majority of professors feel.   Academic freedom isn't an abstract concept - it means the ability to control the terms of our work, to own our intellectual property, and to pressure management into doing the right thing and hiring full-time professors.

In the end, my visit to Boreal was very enlightening.  As a professor at Mohawk College in Hamilton, I teach in a very different environment.  Mohawk has over 12,000 full-time students at a large central campus in a city four times the size of Sudbury.  While there are some similarities in terms of increasing part-time work, budget cuts, and the need for academic freedom, the particular context of Boreal as a northern, francophone college is substantially different.  Canada is an officially bilingual country, and our identity is powerfully shaped by the historical and present-day contribution of our francophone population.  Our college system should be supportive of this community, and of all of the diverse communities that make Canada what it is today.  Sadly, the corporate model being pushed by the provincial Ministry and college management is the antithesis of one that embraces local contexts, supports diverse communities, and ensures that all Canadians can access quality post-secondary education.

Thanks to Local 673 for the hospitality and very educational discussion!

First Stop: Centennial College

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting with the intrepid members of Local 558 at Centennial College.  Centennial has five campuses throughout greater Toronto, and our meeting took place at the Ashtonbee campus, just off of Eglington.  Building 930 at Ashtonbee houses Centennial's automotive technology program, and we held our meeting in a classroom right off of the main automotive shop.

 The impressive automotive technology shop

Thankfully, Local president Jacques O'Sullivan met me in the hallway before I had a chance to get horrendously lost, and introduced me to the other Local officers: 1st Vice President RM Kennedy, 2nd Vice President Derrick Thomson, Chief Steward Patricia Steger, and Secretary Julee Joseph.



Jacques and RM getting the meeting room set up

The officers at Centennial were holding their first Local Executive Committee (LEC) meeting of the year at 5pm, and were welcoming a number of new stewards to the committee.  Between 4 and 5pm I talked with the officers about a number of challenges facing their members.  A significant issue mentioned by officers and stewards in several areas was the growing amount of part-time faculty.  Several programs at Centennial are being run with no full time faculty at all, a situation that makes it difficult to maintain the program's coherence and consistency. 

The lack of full time staff had an impact in other ways.  Due to budget cuts, some programs in business and engineering have decided to not hire any partial load faculty and instead have relied on large amounts of part time and sessional faculty.  Partial load faculty teach between 7 and 12 hours per week, receive a decent hourly rate of pay, and are members of the union with benefits.  In contrast, part-time faculty teach 6 hours per week or less, are paid at a lower rate than partial load, and are not members of the union.  Sessionals teach more than 15 hours per week and receive a daily pay rate.  This rate is also much lower than the equivalent per-hour rate paid to partial load faculty, and sessionals are also not members of the union.  As non-unionized workers, both part-time and sessional professors have no benefits and no job security. 

A steward from engineering related the negative impact that the "no partial-load" policy has had on their programs.  Sessional appointments were being abused, with professors teaching 20 hours per week, 3 different courses, at multiple campuses.  This is an incredibly difficult workload for someone who is not paid for prep, development, evaluation or travel time.  In addition, growing numbers of part-time and sessional faculty place significant strain on the smaller number of full time faculty, who often have to provide considerable support to non full time staff.  One steward remarked that another problem is that, without job security, part time and sessionals won't complain about being over-worked and having insufficient resources.  In addition, they are much less likely to report bullying and harassment of faculty by students or administrators.

RM and Patricia describe working conditions





Another issue facing professors at Centennial are steadily increasing class sizes.  This trend is especially worrisome in hands-on labs, in which students are learning complex skills and need intensive supervision by professors to monitor correct procedure and to ensure health and safety.  Automotive labs have been increasing in size, pharmacy technician lab sizes have also been expanding, and some computer labs have grown to a size that they have become, in the words of one steward "basically unworkable."  In super-sized computer labs students have to wait between 30 and 40 minutes to have a question answered, and faculty members have taken to covering each other's labs to provide support.  The work is simply too much for the assigned faculty member to deal with it alone.

The LEC gets down to business



Despite the challenges in staffing and class size that Local 558 members have been facing, president O'Sullivan and his team remain committed to supporting their members and fighting for the maintenance of academic standards.  The Local has reached out to its membership, created new steward positions, rotated meetings to different campuses, and hired a former chief grievance officer to work in the union office as a member liason.  Their Local newsletter, Unfettered, is also a great tool used for outreach and member engagement. 

Like other academic locals, 558 have got a tough fight on their hands.  It was hard to hear the difficulties they've been facing, but also inspiring to see the creative strategies they have been enacting to deal with budget shortages and a declining full time workforce.  If only they didn't have to spend so much energy making up for a chronic lack of post-secondary funding!

Tomorrow I'll be meeting with the members of Local 673 of College Boreal, in Sudbury.  This will be my first trip to a northern college, and I'm excited to see what they're up to!

'till then,

Kevin

And We're Off!

Welcome all to the Campaign for Quality Education blog!  Over the next few months I'll be travelling to all 24 Ontario community colleges and speaking with professors, counselors, librarians and students about their educational experience.

The campaign is sponsored by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), and the CAAT-A division in particular.  This is the division that includes the professors, counselors and librarians at Ontario's colleges - the people that work with students on the front-lines of post-secondary education.

The purpose of the campaign is to collect stories and raise awareness about the challenges facing our members in an environment that is suffering from scarce funding, increasingly corporate and autocratic management, and decreasing full-time work.  We're hoping to reverse these trends in coming contract negotiations, and to give professors, counselors and librarians the ability to protect academic standards, ensure the full-time staffing needed to deliver quality education, and create a collegial work environment that respects faculty academic freedom.

In the coming weeks I will be posting about my trips to different colleges, about the stories I've heard, and about the complex issues that confront education today.  Please check back often, as I'll be updating regularly!