Posts from April 2019

On April 4, over 100,000 students at over 700 high schools across Ontario walked out to protest the Doug Ford government’s proposed cuts to education on April 4. Organized by students, this mass walkout is believed to be the largest student protest in Canadian history. Days later, on April 6, over 30,000 educators, students, parents, […]

As part of the Ministry of Labour’s consultation on pay transparency reporting, OCUFA sent Minister Laurie Scott a letter expressing faculty concerns about the staggering 31.5 per cent gender pay gap that exists in Ontario and the pervasive pay inequities that exist within most sectors. The Ontario Pay Transparency Act, passed in May 2018 by […]

TORONTO – Ontario’s faculty are alarmed by the Doug Ford government’s budget proposal to allocate 60 per cent of university funding based on institutional performance. By design, performance-based funding threatens education quality as it rewards institutions that meet specific performance targets while penalizing those that do not. Faculty are also concerned by signals that the […]

There is more to Academic Matters than just the print issue. New articles are being added to the Academic Matters website every week. Healthy research ecosystem – healthy researchers? The researcher as an organism of focus within a ‘research ecosystem’ By Michelle L.A. Nelson and Ross Upshur “The academic research environment is changing and researchers report struggling to adapt in order to be successful. Funding shortfalls are perennial, but what systemic shifts […]

The McMaster University Faculty Association (MUFA) has ratified a three-year agreement with their university administration. Significant achievements include extensive improvements to benefits in areas such as mental health, hearing aids, and medical device coverage. MUFA also successfully negotiated increases to its professional development allowance and dependant tuition bursary program. Among other improvements, the association achieved […]

Nicholas Hune-Brown has been awarded the inaugural OCUFA Fellowship in Higher Education Journalism. Hune-Brown is a Toronto-based magazine writer whose work has appeared in Toronto Life, Slate, The Walrus, The Guardian, and other publications. He is the winner of multiple National Magazine Awards and is the features editor of The Local. The Fellowship was established […]

This June, join participants from around the globe for the 2019 Worldviews on Media and Higher Education Conference in Toronto, Canada. Register for Worldviews 2019: Democracy at risk? Reflecting on the future of higher education and media in a post-truth world. Taking place June 12-14, the three-day conference will focus on democracy and the changing power relations of higher education and the media in the global north and south – specifically examining the concept of […]

The University of Ontario Institute of Technology Faculty Association (UOITFA) has ratified a three-year agreement with their university administration. This is the first agreement UOITFA has achieved with its newly merged unit after they consolidated bargaining units last year. The agreement applies to tenured and tenure-stream faculty and teaching faculty (who previously had separate agreements), […]

During the week of March 11th, OCUFA member associations from across the province participated in a series of advocacy meetings with MPPs in their ridings. These meetings were organized during a “constituency week” – a week when the provincial legislature is not sitting and many MPPs return to their ridings to hold meetings with their […]