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The University of Western Ontario Faculty Association (UWOFA) has released a piercing critique of Western’s budgeting practices. Titled “Every budget is a choice,” the report highlights how Western’s administration puts the accumulation of assets ahead of funding core activities, such as teaching.

“Western is not poor,” said UWOFA president Alison Hearn. “The resources are there to support the university’s core mission of teaching and research. The board of governors and senior administration can choose to do so if they wish.”

UWOFA reveals that Western is in good financial shape, with large surpluses ($202 million in 2009) and substantial reserves. There is thus little justification for departmental budget cuts, a wage freeze, or the elimination of academic staff positions. Western could invest more in its core activities – teaching and research – but has simply decided not to do so. UWOFA is calling for a rebalancing of priorities away from unnecessary penny pinching, and towards the educational mission of the university.

The UWOFA report is a great example of the power in analyzing university budgets in detail. OCUFA supports this work through its University Finance Committee.

Read the complete UWOFA report.

In Ontario, about half of salaries for sponsored research at universities is paid to “other instruction and research” staff. Little is known about them, but a survey of research professionals at Québec universities and affiliated research centres provides some insight.

The survey was developed by several interested unions in the province. Of the one thousand-plus respondents, 43 per cent were 25-35 years of age; 56 per cent were over 35 years old. The survey found that 83 per cent of respondents had a graduate degree of some kind, while 27 per cent held a doctorate. A greater proportion of men were involved in science and engineering research, with 51 per cent active in those fields as compared to 29 per cent of women. The largest proportion of women was in the social sciences and humanities and in health research: 37 and 31 per cent, compared to 23 and 24 per cent, respectively, for men.

Almost half of male respondents earned more than $55,000; only 29 per cent of women made that much. Almost a third of female and 20 per cent of male professionals were part-time. That a higher proportion of men have a doctorate and almost twice the rate of degrees in science and engineering might explain some of the difference. Family responsibilities also play a role: while 13 per cent of women identified child care as a reason for working part-time in the profession, the rate amongst men was virtually nil.

The report found that research professionals undertake a wide range of research activities, including authorship of scientific reports for more than half of them, yet have little job security and few prospects for advancement. It is hard to miss the parallels with academic staff with part-time teaching contracts: inadequate and unstable funding produces the same result for employment.

While the data is from Quebec, it is reasonable to suspect that similar trends are at work in Ontario. Non-faculty research work, like all academic jobs, should be good jobs. We need to better understand this group of employees, and work to ensure they have quality working conditions.

Sources:
Council of Finance Officers – Universities of Ontario, Financial Report of Ontario Universities
Paul-André Lapointe, Chedli Baya Chatti, Hans Ivers, Étude sur la situation des professionelles et professionels de recherche dans les universités et centres affiliés du Quebec

OCUFA, alongside our members, continues to explore new pension options for the university sector.  In early February, we invited our member associations to indicate a desire to work with us and other like-minded faculty associations on this project through a newly established group, and to provide the name of an individual committed to providing faculty association input as these explorations unfold. Associations were asked to provide OCUFA with a motion indicating a desire to participate in the group’s explorations. Whether a faculty association ultimately seeks or receives a mandate from its own members to join either a newly created multi-employer pension plan or an existing Jointly Sponsored Pension Plan (JSPP) is a decision for a later date.

All the parties in the university sector continue to await feedback from government on the joint principles tabled by the Union Pension Coalition and COU on January 20th, and OCUFA remains committed to those six principles as a necessary foundation for the creation of a multi-employer JSPP option for this sector.  The principles are:

• Participation in a sector-wide or multi-employer JSPP will be voluntary and open to all pension plan types and all employee groups.
• A university-sector or multi-employer JSPP will be negotiated by the parties that will be joining the plan.
• A university-sector or multi-employer JSPP will receive a more favourable funding regime.
• A university-sector or multi-employer JSPP will include a guaranteed retirement income.
• A university-sector or multi-employer JSPP will be fully funded at inception.
• Under this new equal partnership arrangement, each of the parties involved should have access to the information necessary to make an informed decision on whether or not to proceed.

Our current process represent the first stages of implementing the second principle – that any new plan or JSPP arrangement will be established through a process of negotiation between the parties that will be joining the plan.

To date, eight OCUFA member associations have indicated a desire to participate in this process. There is no deadline for indicating a desire to participate, and member associations will be welcome to join the group at any time.

The group held its first conference call on March 14th, so our work is officially underway.  We have begun to develop a work plan to guide us through what will no doubt be a complex process.  We look forward to continuing working with associations across Ontario in this next phase of pension discussions.

New data shows that average class sizes are on the rise at Ontario’s universities, threatening the quality of education received by students. Ontario needs to start hiring more full-time professors to address this problem.

Data on average class size in Ontario universities are hard to find. Ever since the Interim Accountability Agreements between universities and the provincial government revealed huge increases in the average class size as students in the “double cohort,” public data on class size has been limited to the number of courses by size range and by year of undergraduate study. There are differences between institutions of course, but the overall trends drawn from the latest Common University Data Ontario (CUDO) reports suggests that class sizes continue to swell, even after the double cohort has moved on.

Looking at the percentage of courses by size ranges reveals steadily eroding conditions. Between 2005 and 2012, the proportion of first and second year classes with a hundred or fewer students fell by ten per cent; the share of classes with more than a hundred students increased by more than 40 per cent. The distribution of third and fourth year courses has shown less drastic shifts, but the trend is clearly towards larger class sizes. The number of fourth year classes with more than one hundred students has tripled.

Short of a return to the kind of reporting for the original accountability agreements, there is no way to determine what actual class sizes are at Ontario universities. At best we can get a sense of the magnitude of the change by assigning a constant number for each size range to come up with an overall class size. For example, if the minimum number of students in each size range (using 15 for the less than 30 range) were assigned to stand-in for average class size and come up with the number of students enrolled in the classes in that size range, class sizes will have increased by a seven per cent for fourth year students and 22 per cent for first year students. The increase might not be as much if different stand-in figures were used, but so far no one has suggested that larger classes are better for students.

OCUFA has argued for years that increased faculty hiring is needed to preserve the quality of education received by students. Since 2000, enrolment has increased by 64 per cent, while the number of full-time faculty has only increased by 30 per cent. More faculty means smaller classes, more one-on-one engagement, and better learning outcomes.

Source: Institutional CUDO reports
Note: Nipissing data are not included for some years because it is not clear that the data include only credit courses