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...