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Early-bird discount for Future U conference ends December 20th

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The early-bird registration discount for OCUFA’s “Future U: Creating the universities we want” conference ends on Dec. 20, 2013. Register now to save on your conference fee!
 
Future U will consider current trends in higher education, and will explore alternatives that serve the needs of students, faculty, and communities. Topics include:

  • Re-imaging research, teaching, community service, and governance
  • The real uses of technology to improve teaching, learning, and research
  • shifting relationship between higher education and the state
  • Promising developments in higher education across the globe

Confirmed speakers include:

  • Maria Maisto, President, New Faculty Majority
  • George Fallis, York University, Author of “Multiversities, Ideas, and Democracy”
  • Kevin Kee, Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities, Brock University
  • Aaron Bady, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas
  • Melonie Fullick, PhD Student, York University
  • Glen Jones, Ontario Research Chair in Postsecondary Education Policy and Measurement, OISE
  • Nick Falvo, PhD Candidate, Carleton University

The conference will be held from Feb. 27-28 at the Intercontinental Yorkville Hotel in Toronto. For more information and to register, please visit the conference website. Space is limited, so register today!

 

Data check: Business, provinces opt out of research funding

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Across Canada and in Ontario, business and provincial government investment in research is falling, and universities are picking up the slack.
 
The latest data on research and development (R&D) from Statistics Canada indicate that aggregate research expenditures in Canada will fall this year. Once forecast GDP inflation (1.3 per cent) is taken into account, the decline is expected to be over $600 million, or two per cent.
 
It is the decline in business expenditures that contributes the most to the drop. In percentage terms, provincial government expenditures represented the second largest decline. Expenditures by higher education institutions and the federal government essentially held steady. Taking a longer view, however, only the higher education sector has kept up its level of activity in real terms. Since 2007, the steepest fall in R&D spending has been in provincial bodies, followed by business (16 per cent) and the federal government (12 per cent).
 
In Ontario the peak for total research and development expenditure was 2005. Between then and 2011 (the last year of reported data), Ontario business expenditures in constant dollars are down by 18 per cent. Federal government expenditures within the province rose, but only if expenditure in the National Capital Region is included. In contrast, R&D performed by Ontario higher education institutions rose by nine per cent.
 
Sources:
Statistics Canada, Gross Domestic Expenditures on Research and Development in Canada (GERD), and the Provinces; Spending on research and development, 2013 (intentions)

Ontario’s Differentiation Policy Framework: OCUFA’s analysis

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On November 29, 2013, the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities Released its “Differentiation Policy Framework.” This document is the finalized version of the framework that was leaked in September and then made public on the Ministry’s website.It lays out the principles, components, and metrics that will guide the Ministry’s differentiation policy going forward, and is intended to inform the Strategic Mandate Agreements (SMAs) currently being negotiated by university administrations and the government.

OCUFA has completed an analysis of the policy. Overall, it shows that MTCU has softened its top-down approach to differentiation, and is prepared to let universities chart their own course, with some limits. The policy framework is very high level, and does not contain an “action plan” for government. Crucial areas – such as a new funding model to support the government’s goals – have not been addressed. In discussions with senior MTCU staff, it is clear that an outcomes-based funding formula is favoured, but no model has been developed at this time.

The tension between competing goals of the framework, and the confusion within the underlying logic of differentiation remain in this version of the paper. On the one hand, the government insists that one of the central goals of differentiation is to ensure that higher education in Ontario maintains and enhances quality. On the other hand, the entire exercise is proposed against the backdrop of fiscal uncertainty and the pressing need for institutions to contain costs and “financial sustainability and accountability” are presented as a key priority for differentiation.

While cost cutting is never explicitly articulated as the overriding motivation, it is clear that the constrained fiscal context is driving the entire differentiation exercise. Cost-containment is often at odds with the imperatives of equitable student access and quality education, so we are concerned that the push towards differentiation may harm the quality and accessibility of higher education in Ontario.

OCUFA believes that Ontario’s universities are already highly differentiated. If implemented poorly, the differentiation framework may have the effect of stamping out meaningful, bottom-up diversity and replacing it with limited vision of top-down differentiation.

We are also concerned that the movement towards an outcomes-based funding model will harm students studying at institutions deemed by government to be “under-performing.” We are also worried that an outcomes-based model will politicize university funding, aligning it to the short-term priorities of the government of the day, rather than the long-term needs of Ontario.

The government has signaled that it is willing to work with stakeholders to achieve its differentiation goals. While they have under-delivered on this promise up to this point, OCUFA is prepared to work with MTCU to ensure that faculty interests are fairly represented in all policies going forward.

Read the full analysis.

Read our FAQs on Differentiation and Program Prioritization.

 

Bargaining Wire: Laurier contract faculty reach tentative settlement

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Contract Academic Staff at Wilfrid Laurier University reached a tentative deal last Tuesday after a mediation session with William Kaplan. The ratification vote is scheduled for Monday, December 2, 2013 and will run until December 6th. OCUFA Report will have more details after the vote is complete.
 
As part of the bargaining strategy, the faculty association launched the We Teach Laurier campaign to highlight the stories and issues of contract faculty. At Carleton, where contract academic staff represented by CUPE 4600 are also in bargaining, a similar We Teach Carleton campaign has been created. Sessionals at Laurier and Carleton – and their colleagues across Ontario – face similar issues.
They are fighting for fair salary and benefits, better working conditions, and job security.
 
Elsewhere in bargaining news, faculty at Algoma and Trent are at the table. Brescia and UOIT (teaching faculty) are in conciliation, and are both working towards first contracts.  Faculty at OCADU are currently in mediation. With agreements expiring in 2014, Brock, Carleton, CMC, Guelph, King’s, Laurentian, the Nipissing contract faculty unit, St. Michael’s (Toronto), Western, and Windsor are preparing for bargaining. Contract faculty at St. Jerome’s (Waterloo) will be negotiating their first contract in 2014.

Robert Dickeson: Right for Ontario?

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The term “program prioritization” has been making headlines recently, as several Ontario universities have begun this controversial rationalization process. Program prioritization involves ranking every academic and administrative program according to set criteria, and then directing more resources to highly ranked programs while marking poor performers for cuts and closure. Program prioritization is based on a procedure developed by American consultant, Robert “Bob” Dickeson. But who is this man, and is his product any good?
 
York University history professor Craig Heron has done an analysis of Dickeson’s methods, and the results are concerning. Professors and academic librarians should view the Dickesonian prioritization with extreme skepticism, and not just because it justifies program cuts and closures.  It also embodies a flawed methodology:

  • Programs are ranked according to hundreds of data points, which creates the possibility of serious errors and promotes subjective judgments.
  • Those tasked with ranking are asked to evaluate programs they may know nothing about.
  • It produces absurd comparisons. The logic of program prioritization leads to equivalencies being drawn between bookstores and Physics programs, English departments with postage and mail services. This is apples and oranges at its very worst.

More worrisome, program prioritization violates the authority of Academic Senates to make academic decisions. In short, it can be viewed as an attempt on the part of central administration to circumvent Senate and to centralize academic authority. 
 
Guelph is the furthest along in its program prioritization, with Laurier, Brock, and York close behind. Algoma, Carleton, Nipissing, OCADU, Ottawa, Ryerson, Trent, and UOIT have also signaled their interest in program prioritization.  Program prioritization is being encouraged by the government through its Productivity and Innovation Fund, and represents the on-campus component of their differentiation agenda.
 
OCUFA is assisting faculty associations in pushing back against program prioritization, with analysis, strategies, and mobilization resources. Check the OCUFA website and OCUFA Report for the latest developments.

Government of Ontario releases Differentiation Policy Framework

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On Friday, November 29, 2013, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) released its policy framework for differentiation in Ontario’s university and college sector. According to the document, MTCU views differentiation as “a primary policy driver for the system.” As such, the framework will be used to inform the Strategic Mandate Agreement (SMA) process and on-campus initiatives like program prioritization.

The document lays out six “components” of differentiation:

  1. Jobs, innovation, and economic development
  2. Teaching and learning
  3. Student population
  4. Research and graduate education
  5. Program offerings
  6. Institutional collaboration to support student mobility.

The framework also identifies “strategic enrolment” and “financial sustainability” as key areas of focus going forward. For each of the components, a series of metrics are proposed with the suggestion that optional, institution-specific measures will also be used.

It is not clear from the framework how MTCU plans to use the components and metrics to guide differentiation. Will the government be using the metrics to set goals and therefore influence institutional behavior? Will institutions be able to define their own objectives within each component? Are the metrics descriptive or prescriptive? OCUFA will be seeking clarity on these questions and more in the coming weeks. We will also be analyzing the framework in detail for our members.

For more information on the Differentiation Agenda and how it relates to SMAs and program prioritization, please read our fact sheet Ontario’s Differentiation Agenda: Frequently Asked Questions.

Data check: Ontario university grads (still) get jobs

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Listening to the pundits, you’d think there is an employment crisis for university graduates in Ontario. In fact, our grads are doing just fine despite the negative effects of the financial crisis. 

The Council of Ontario Universities recently released the results of the 2012 Graduate Survey. According to the report, 92 per cent of those graduating in 2010 were employed two years later. The employment rates of the Class of 2010 six months and two years after graduation are lower than those for graduates in previous years, due largely to a labour market still recovering from the Great Recession.

That much is reflected in the increase of the 2010 cohort’s employment rate between the six-month and two-year milestones. It improved by almost six percentage points, compared to the one and half to three point improvement of those who graduated before the downturn.

Labour market conditions also show up in the degree to which “the skills they gained in their programs match the skills they need at work.” The Class of 2010 does not fare as well as cohorts from previous years in matching skills to jobs. Nonetheless, the skills match improvement between six months and two years after graduation is roughly the same for them as for previous graduates.

The report does not indicate whether the salaries reported for graduates in previous years are adjusted for inflation, so it is hard to know whether the noticeably flat trend reflects the skills match. Still, the average annual salary for the same cohort rose by 15 per cent from the point in time six months after to two years after their graduation.

This data makes clear that graduate unemployment – low as it is – is not the fault of universities. Rather, the long hangover of the 2008 financial crisis is to blame. Thankfully, this negative effect largely disappears two years after graduation.

Source: Council of Ontario Universities, 2012 Graduate Survey

Reality Check: Have MOOCs lost their shine?

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On November 14, 2013, the magazine Fast Company published a remarkable article. A profile of Udacity founder and Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) evangelist Sebastian Thrun, it contains a stunning revelation: even those closest to the MOOC industry have serious doubts about their quality and educational impact.
 
As Thrun states:
 
“We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don’t educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product….It was a painful moment.”
 
This realization came after analyzing some uncomfortable data. Fewer than 10 per cent of completed a Udacity course, and many of those did not receive a passing grade. According to the article, “for every 100 pupils who enrolled in a free course, something like five actually learned the topic.”
 
It gets worse. Udacity recently partnered with San Jose State University, a large public institution in California, to deliver remedial math, college algebra, and elementary statistics. These programs were for credit, charged a $150 tuition fee, and were targeted at high school students from a low-income high school and struggling San Jose students.
 
The results were “disastrous.”
 
Among those pupils who took remedial math during the pilot program, just 25% passed. And when the online class was compared with the in-person variety, the numbers were even more discouraging. A student taking college a lgebra in person was 52% more likely to pass than one taking a Udacity class, making the $150 price tag–roughly one-third the normal in-state tuition–seem like something less than a bargain.
 
In the wake of these disappointing outcomes, Thrun is backing away from the idea that MOOCs are capable of delivering free, high quality  higher education to hundreds of thousands of students beyond the wall of the traditional university. Instead, Udacity will move to a fee-per-course model and abandon academic disciplines in favor of more vocational-focused learning. Much of these new courses will be designed for corporate clients, such as Google, to meet their in-house  training needs.
 
For Thrun, MOOCs have gone from a much-hyped higher education revolution (the New York Times even christened 2012 as “The Year of the MOOC”) to a corporate training tool in less than two years. Institutions and governments looking to these courses – whether to build profile, reach more students, or cut costs – should temper their enthusiasm accordingly.

Bargaining Wire: Laurier contract faculty approve strike mandate

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On Thursday, November 14, 2013, contract staff at Wilfrid Laurier University voted in favour of a strike. Of those who voted, 90.6 per cent supported the strike mandate.
 
A date for mediation has been set for November 26th.
 
The 376 contract faculty at Laurier are represented by the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association (WLUFA). As reported in last week’s OCUFA Report, the contract faculty unit is fighting for better job security, access to benefits, and fair compensation.

Government of Ontario releases fall economic statement

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On November 7, Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa presented the government’s Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review to the Ontario Legislature. The fall economic statement allows the government to signal its fiscal priorities between budgets, and Minister Sousa’s November 7 statement indicated a new direction for the provincial government.
 
Under the leadership of Premier Kathleen Wynne, the provincial government appears to be moving away from the focus on fiscal restraint and austerity that prevailed under Dalton McGuinty.  While the Province remains committed to eliminating the deficit by 2017-18, the fall economic statement signalled a new commitment to targeted spending in priority areas in order to spur economic growth and protect key social programs.
 
Minister Sousa’s statement acknowledged that simply controlling spending growth would not balance the province’s budget, given that Ontario already has the lowest per-capita program spending in Canada and provincial revenues were $5 billion lower than 2010 projections. The fall economic statement rejected calls for across the board spending cuts, but also ruled out tax increases. Nonetheless, the statement expressed a new willingness to address the revenue side of the province’s budget equation in order to enable targeted investments in priority areas.
 
Priority spending areas include full-day kindergarten, the Ontario Tuition Grant, a youth jobs strategy, social assistance and infrastructure. Higher education is presented primarily as an important driver of the economic growth and job creation.  
 
Interestingly, there was no mention in Minister Sousa’s statement of public sector wage restraint. The full text of the Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review included broad references to the need to control compensation costs “within Ontario’s existing fiscal framework,” but the commitment to zero per cent wage increases for public sector employees that prevailed under Dalton McGuinty has disappeared.
 
Read the Finance Minister’s statement to the Legislature here:
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/fallstatement/2013/statement.html

OCUFA to hold conference on the future of universities

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OCUFA is pleased to announce our 2014 Conference, “Future U: Creating the Universities We Want”. The event will be held from February 27-28, 2014 in Toronto.

The Future U conference will look at current trends and the possibility of alternatives for the future of higher education. Our goal is to allow professors, librarians, administrators, students and policymakers to consider how they would like the future of higher education to unfold, in Ontario and beyond.   

What will the future hold?  What future does the higher education community and broader public want for universities and colleges?  What is desirable and what can be achieved? “Future U” will answer these questions and more.
 
The conference will feature speakers from Canada, the US, the UK, and Europe in a series keynote addresses and panel presentations. There will also be opportunities for informal discussion and audience participation. Session topics include:
 

  • Imagining alternatives to current directions in higher education
  • Current challenges to “traditional” faculty work and re-imaging this work in the future
  • Reclaiming the civic university
  • Creating the democratic university
  • Achieving educational quality and equality through technology
  • Higher education and the state: new challenges, new opportunities

 
Like previous OCUFA conferences, a diversity of views will be sought in each of the keynote and panel sessions.

The early-bird fee for those registering on or before December 20, 2013 is $350.00, which includes continental breakfasts, lunch, refreshments, an evening reception, and all materials. The regular registration fee after December 20, 2013 is $400.00; and $375.00 for OCUFA members.  The student rate is $150.00.
 
For more information, and to register, please click here.

Contract faculty at Laurier to hold strike vote

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Contract faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University are holding a strike vote this week. The Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association (WLUFA), who represent part-time faculty, filed for a no-board last Thursday after two unsuccessful days of conciliation. The contract faculty unit continues to push for job security and benefits, in an attempt to improve their precarious working conditions.
 
Contract faculty across Ontario face similar struggles, yet it is difficult to know the true extent of the problem. A thorough examination is required, but this research is hampered by poor data. We don’t know how many contract faculty there are, or the working conditions they experience. OCUFA has called on the Government of Ontario to fund an impartial research project to explore precarious academic work. This research is a necessary first step in addressing the challenges that face contract faculty.
 
Contract faculty make up a significant portion of academic staff teaching at Ontario universities. At Laurier, these instructors teach more than half of students in classes, tutorials, labs and seminars. Yet, their compensation only made up 3.3 per cent of total operating revenues last year. In response, the We Teach Laurier campaign is raising awareness about contract faculty issues and telling the stories of these hard-working teachers and researchers. 
 
The struggles of contract faculty are widespread, but they are now beginning to  collectively confront the issue of precarious work. In the US, where institutions now use a huge number of contract faculty to teach courses, there have been recent gains. More contract faculty are creating and joining unions, including recent certifications at Tufts and Georgetown University.

Reality check: Universities can’t pick up the R&D slack from business

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It might be overstating the case for the Globe and Mail’s Konrad Yakabuski to “blame business” for Canada’s poor showing in research and development (R&D). But it is also becoming increasingly clear it makes little sense to demand universities and university researchers to become more business-like and pick up the entrepreneurial slack. As we noted a couple of weeks ago, the level and intensity business R&D is in steady decline. The trend, Yakabuski observes, is despite the relatively high level of government support for R&D.
 
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Canada ranks 19th out of 31 countries in terms of business expenditure on R&D. That is despite Canada ranking sixth in government support, including more than two and a half billion dollars or so in federal R&D tax credits earned by business annually.
 
Even as the federal government is revisiting its R&D tax credit, it continues to drive university research funding down the path of increased university-business research ventures and research commercialization. Once projected GDP inflation (1.3 per cent) is taken into account, the Main Estimates for the “Tri-council” agencies that fund most university sponsored research show that funding specifically earmarked for business-oriented research is on the rise. Support for other research has declined. The amounts diverted may seem trivial, for now; the long-term importance of this shift is not.
 
The Council of Canadian Academies has assessed the state of business R&D for the federal government. They found and explained an apparent paradox: business under-invests in R&D, but university-based research continues to perform well. The authors are clear that innovation in Canada depends on business investment in R&D. So, pushing universities to push business research doesn’t work. Rather, the Council echoes the sentiments of Roger Miller and Marcel Côté and encourages government to let universities pursue their strengths:
 
“Their most important role in local development is not generation of new knowledge, but their ability to attract talent and, through that talent, to disseminate leading-edge knowledge in the local economy. But to attract the best and brightest and properly train them, they need to conduct leading-edge research. So universities should continue to orient their research toward the pursuit of Nobel prizes and peer-review publishing and in the process expose their students to leading-edge ideas. This is what they’re good at.”
 
Sources:
Council of Canadian Academies, Paradox Lost: Explaining Canada’s Research Strength and Innovation Weakness; The State of Industrial R&D in Canada
Department of Finance Canada, Government of Canada Tax Expenditures
Roger Miller and Marcel Côté, Innovation Reinvented: Six Games That Drive Growth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2012.
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2013
Treasury Board of Canada, Government Expenditure Plan and Main Estimates
Konrad Yakabuski, If BlackBerry is sold, Canada faces an innovation vacuum, The Globe and Mail, August 17, 2013

Extension of solvency relief for Ontario Universities announced

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On October 23rd, the Government of Ontario announced that it was giving universities and other broader public sector pensions plans an additional three years of help to put their pension plans on a sustainable track.
 
Without this regulatory measure, a number of universities would have been required to put large amounts of additional money into their plans beginning in early 2014. The additional three years gives faculty associations and their membership much-needed breathing room as they work to address their pension challenges.
 
OCUFA had lobbied the government to provide some short term additional relief to the universities facing serious pension pressures. The Council of Ontario Universities (COU) was also active in advocating for extended solvency relief.
 
It is OCUFA’s assessment that additional short-term relief of the kind provided in this regulation will not put pension benefits at risk. The continuation of historically low interest rates is putting unanticipated pressure on plans across the province, and this relief helps mitigate the impact of this circumstance. OCUFA and faculty associations across Ontario are currently working on pensions solutions that will ensure all faculty members receive good pensions, at a fair price, through plans that are stable and sustainable.

Reality Check: Skills gap? What skills gap?

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Much has been made about the supposed Canadian “skills gap”, or the mismatch between the skills needed to fill vacant jobs and the skills actually possessed by workers. But new research by TD Economics suggests that the “gap” is largely a myth.

The study, Jobs in Canada, finds that concerns about the skills gap are unsupported by the available evidence, and that the existing data makes it almost impossible to determine if the situation is any worse than it was a decade ago. As the authors note:

Views on the job market are vulnerable to being driven by anecdote. Our findings pour some cold water on perceptions that Canada’s job market is deeply dysfunctional and currently facing a crisis with respect to skills. Our data test uncovers some evidence of tightness in a number of occupations that have been widely-perceived to be encountering labour shortages. Yet, our analysis failed to provide a real smoking gun.

The paper also addresses the skills issue as it relates to post-secondary education. Again, the authors fail to find much evidence that universities and colleges are failing to provide graduates with needed skills:

Some believe that the post-secondary system is graduating too many Canadians in areas which are not in demand, thus leaving a large pool of underemployed people. OECD over-qualification and under-qualification rates for Canada relative to other countries provide some supporting evidence. Still, the job market outcomes of recent graduates, including those with liberal arts degrees, are likely better than many Canadians perceive.

They add:

A closer look reveals that the perception related to recent Canadian graduates flipping hamburgers is exaggerated. For instance, the 2011 NHS data showed that unemployment rates for the 25-29 year age cohort with some form of PSE ran in the 6-8% range depending on the level of education (see Chart 22). For people aged 25 to 64 years old that received their Bachelor degree in Canada, the unemployment rate is just 3.7% and only 5.5% for people aged 25-29years. The comparable unemployment rates for those with high school are 6.9% and 10.4%, respectively.

Recent discussions around the need to “reform” Ontario’s universities have been driven in part by variations of the skills gap hypothesis. With no real evidence to support the idea that institutions are under-performing in the skills/employment area, students, faculty, and citizens should all be wondering why certain policymakers are so convinced there is a problem.