Talking About Negotiations in 2014 - Austerity and Underfunding in Higher Education

Greetings!

Well, I didn't expect to be taking this long a break from posting to the Campaign for Quality Education blog.  For the past two months I've been working on the Report on Education in Ontario Colleges, a document that sums up conversations with over 600 faculty at all 24 of Ontario's Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.  The Report will be launched shortly, and in subsequent weeks I'll be posting about the various questions it raises.

However,  I'll first be sharing a talk on the issues facing college professors that was recorded at Georgian College this past December.  OPSEU's talented videographer, Anna Jover, was present at the talk, and has done her best to make me sound somewhat coherent (no small feat!).  Over the next few days the talk will be posted in four parts.

Part one of the talk deals with an important aspect of college education today - the climate of fiscal austerity and subsequent chronic underfunding of higher education.  This is a story of tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest individuals, and of federal and provincial governments' retreat from funding public services.  This context is critical if we're to understand the challenges facing post-secondary today.

After posting the talk, I will be returning to the college meetings that occurred late in 2013, and checking in with the hard-working faculty at Fanshawe, Loyalist, Sault, Seneca, and Durham.

And now, part 1 of CAAT-A Bargaining 2014...

Negotiations 2014 - Part 1