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.