Greetings!
Today's post contains a link to Part 2 of a talk that I gave at Georgian College last December. Part 1 dealt with the history of Ontario community colleges, and changes to levels of government funding.
Part 2 of the talk looks at how government austerity and underfunding of college education has led to increased burdens on both students and faculty. For students, rising tuitions have led to unsustainable debt-loads and an increasingly skewed balance between work and study . Many students work full time while also engaging in full time studies - a situation that leads to stress, health problems, and decreased academic performance.
For faculty, underfunding has led to layoffs of full time positions and to the proliferation of online courses as a management cost-cutting strategy. Without intellectual property protection, online course delivery becomes a way to increase class sizes, reduce faculty, deliver courses using part-time faculty, and reduce "program duplication".
Finally, despite austerity for college students and faculty, the number of full time college administrators is ballooning. Money is increasingly going to hire new managers, not to improve the quality of education.
Negotiations 2014 - Part 2
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