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