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Professors and Librarians at UOttawa ratify new agreement

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On August 29, 2013, the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (APUO) ratified their new collective agreement, with 98 per cent voting in favour of the deal.

Following the ratification, the APUO sent this message to their membership:

We wish to thank our members for the strong and continued support given to us during this round of bargaining, especially for the strike vote held on July 31st. This unprecedented mobilization of APUO members was crucial in helping us to reach this settlement during mediation.

Full details of the settlement can be found on the APUO website.

Data check: R&D funding stagnates as Federal contribution falls

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Support for research and development in Canada has stagnated, due largely to a decrease if federal government support. Ontario continues to do better than most provinces, but mainly by directing more operating funds to research activities.
 
Statistics Canada reports that research and development (R&D) spending by universities and other higher education research institutions rose by 3.4 per cent between 2011-12 and 2012-13. After taking inflation into account, the increase was only 0.2 per cent. The flat-lining of research expenditures is largely due to a three per cent real decline in federal government support, which accounts for about one quarter of research funding.
 
Ontario’s higher education sector fared better than universities in most other provinces. Although federal funding spent in the province fell by almost two per cent, overall spending increased by almost four per cent. The provincial increase includes a partial recovery in business support after the financial crisis and record funding from not-for-profit agencies. However, most of the increase is attributable to funding from the operating funds of the institutions themselves, which accounted for 46 per cent of the financial backing for the R&D performed by Ontario universities.
 
There is no reason to believe Ontario will continue to be an exception in years after 2011-12. Operating funding to universities from the province will barely keep up with expected inflation. Enrolment increase will stretch operating funds even further. Nor is the provincial government increasing research funding to fill the gap. To the contrary, provincial research funding has been falling steadily for the past few years, even before taking inflation into account.
 
Government of Ontario, Minister of Finance, Expenditure Estimates
Statistics Canada, Spending on research and development in the higher education sector, 2011/2012

OCUFA calls for increased efforts to free Tarek Loubani and John Greyson

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On August 17, 2013, Dr. Tarek Loubani, an assistant professor at Western, and John Greyson, an associate professor at York, were arrested and imprisoned in Egypt. OCUFA, CAUT, and faculty associations across Canada have taken action to urge the Government of Canada to do everything possible to effect their release. Below, please find the letter written by Kate Lawson, President of OCUFA, to the Honourable John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada. Copies were also sent to Wael Aboul-Magd, Ambassador of Egypt to Canada, and David Drake, Canada’s ambassador to Egypt.

Dear Minister Baird;

On behalf of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), I am writing to express my concern about the imprisonment in Egypt of Dr. Tarek Loubani and Professor John Greyson after their arrest by police in Cairo, on August 17, 2013.

I know you, your staff, and Foreign Affairs Canada have been investigating this matter. I thank you for your work so far, and urge you to intensify your efforts over the coming days. The unlawful detention of any Canadian is cause for serious concern and action. This case has also affected Ontario’s 17,000 professors and academic librarians deeply, as Dr. Loubani and Professor Greyson are respected colleagues, outstanding educators, and committed humanitarians. At the time of their arrest, they were en route to the Gaza Strip for an academic and medical partnership with a local hospital. Securing their timely release will allow them to continue their important work.

We join with faculty associations across Canada, and the Canadian Association of University Teachers, in calling for every diplomatic effort possible to free Dr. Loubani and Professor Greyson. If OCUFA can be of any assistance in this matter, we stand ready to provide help wherever possible and appropriate.

Yours sincerely,

Kate Lawson, President

Ontarian Confederation of University Faculty Associations

An online petition has also been organized. Please take the time to add your name to those calling for the release of Tarek and John: www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=1943&src=unicontacts

You can also send a letter to Minister Baird at the following address:

The Honourable John Baird
Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0G2

OCUFA meets with Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities

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On August 26, 2013, OCUFA President Kate Lawson met with Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities Brad Duguid. The purpose of the meeting was to consult OCUFA on several policy initiatives, including a new credit transfer framework, online education, and the differentiation agenda.
 
The Minister emphasized that the government is still in the process of developing its plans in these areas. It appears that the government has backed away from the more strident reforms proposed last year, and will be taking a more collaborative, iterative approach to smaller-scale change.
 
Nevertheless, OCUFA remains concerned that some of the initiatives may be harmful to the quality of higher education in Ontario. During the meeting, we were clear that any reform must be careful to protect the autonomy of Ontario’s universities, and respect the academic freedom and intellectual property rights of professors and academic librarians. It is also imperative that reform, where needed, be undertaken with the goal of improving student success, not cutting costs.
 
OCUFA prepared a written submission in advance of the meeting, which can be downloaded here.

Professors and Academic Librarians at the University of Ottawa reach tentative agreement

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The Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (APUO) have reached a tentative agreement with the administration of the University of Ottawa.
 
After a difficult round of bargaining, and exceptional mobilization and support of APUO’s membership, the tentative deal was reached on August 4, 2013. The proposed deal contains solid improvements for benefits and salary, as well as a commitment to hire new full-time faculty and a freeze on “teaching-only” faculty positions. The deal also includes increases to pension contributions, protecting benefit levels for members.  
 
A ratification meeting has been called for August 29, 2013. More information on the tentative settlement is available at the APUO website.

Data Check: Canada falling behind in developing research talent

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A decade ago, Mike Lazaridis highlighted the role of university research in developing the talent needed for success in the wider world of R&D. This is no less true today. Unfortunately, Canada continues to lag in university attainment rates, particularly in advanced degrees.
 
Given the importance of producing research talent, it is no accident that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is now undertaking a major project to understand the role of knowledge in wealth creation, or that the Science, Technology and Innovation Council of Canada recently examined “talent development and deployment” as a key factor in Canada’s competiveness.
 
But is Canada keeping up? Amongst 25-64 year olds, Canada ranks tenth in university attainment rates, according to the OECD’s Education at a Glance. Canada’s place is buoyed by Ontario (which would rank seventh on its own). The OECD also shows that other countries are improving their attainment rates more quickly than the province. So, while Ontario actually would rank sixth for university attainment amongst 35-44 year-olds, it falls to eighth amongst 25-34 year-olds.
 
Meanwhile, the OECD’s Main Science and Technology Indicators show that Canada ranks well back in the pack – the bottom third – in the rate at which students graduate with advanced research degrees. The report also illustrates Canada’s relative decline when it comes to the number of researchers as a proportion of the workforce. That the decline is partly due to trends in business expenditures should not obscure the fact that the core activities of Canada’s universities – teaching and research – are seriously short of public funds. The education and research missions of our universities are intimately bound together and essential to future economic and social success. No one and no policy is served by continued provincial underfunding to universities.

Bargaining Update: Professors and librarians approve strike mandate at UOttawa

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On July 31, 2013, professors and academic librarians at the University of Ottawa authorized the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (APUO) to call a strike if necessary. The strike mandate was approved by 82 per cent.

The strike mandate was requested by APUO after the administration of the University of Ottawa officially requested a “No Board” report be issued by the Ministry of Labour on Friday July 19 2013,. The employer’s unilateral decision has triggered a 17 day countdown until the employer is allowed to unilaterally rewrite the collective agreement, to impose a lockout, or for the union to go out on strike. The employer chose to do so even though the APUO has continuously and explicitly expressed their desire to continue negotiations. The request was also made despite the fact that on July 12, in the presence of the conciliator, the employer agreed to the APUO’s suggestion that the conciliation process be left open after the planned mediation scheduled for August 3rd and 4th.
 
The employer’s decision to unilaterally force an end to negotiations by calling for conciliation and a ‘No Board’ is without precedent at the University of Ottawa, and one with very significant consequences. Following the employer’s actions, and in order to avoid a unilateral rewriting of the collective agreement or a lockout as early as August 8, the APUO decided to seek a strike mandate at a Special General Assembly (SGA).
 
The APUO remains committed to a fair and equitable settlement for all of its members, and will not be pushed into a less-than-acceptable settlement that does not support the quality of education at the University, nor meets the legitimate and reasonable expectations of our members, and the larger community on campus. OCUFA Report will provide more information as it becomes available. The latest updates can also be found on the APUO website.

Data Check: Ontario continues to lead Canada in university attainment rates

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The latest data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that Ontario continues to lead the pack in university attainment. Overall, Canada’s attainment rate in college and university education amongst 25-64 year olds is the highest amongst OECD member countries. Canada’s ranking is due in large part to college attainment rates. Although three other provinces perform as well as or better than Ontario when it comes to college attainment, Education Indicators in Canada shows that Ontario routinely has higher rates of university attainment.
 
There is still some distance to go if Ontario is to reach the provincial government’s goal of a 70 per cent attainment rate by 2020. This goal was popularized by Bob Rae in his 2005 report on higher education in Ontario. Census data collected shortly after the Rae Report show that 55 per cent of Ontario’s 25-54 year olds had a college or university credential. After the provincial government made the 70 per cent goal its official policy in 2010, that figure rose to 60 per cent.
 
On the face of it, an average increase in attainment rates of one percentage point per year makes the target attainable. Whether it will be enough to ensure sufficient talent for research and innovation is another matter. We’ll look at this issue in a future issue of OCUFA Report.

Announcement: We are moving!

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PLEASE NOTE THAT EFFECTIVE JULY 27, 2013 THE OCUFA OFFICE WILL BE LOCATED AT:

4TH FLOOR, 21 RANDOLPH AVE.
TORONTO, ON M6P 4G4

OUR TELEPHONE, FAX, EMAIL AND WEBSITE INFORMATION WILL REMAIN THE SAME; HOWEVER, THE OFFICE WILL BE DOWN FOR SEVERAL DAYS AND YOU WILL EXPERIENCE ERRORS WITH SOME OF OUR WEB SERVICES.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND COOPERATION. HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY SUMMER.

Reality Check: New policies needed to support academic women with children

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If one were to follow the career track of female and male graduate students, to what degree do individuals in each category end up in the higher echelons of the academy, and why? These are questions that have been addressed in a new book, Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower by Mary Ann Mason, Nicholas H. Wolfinger and Marc Goulden of the University of California (UC) Berkeley. The key finding of their research*, is that academic women’s careers are negatively affected as a result of having children, disproportionate to men, and more so in the sciences.
 
Specifically, the UC research reveals that in general, it takes women in California longer to reach the rank of full professor and they are less likely to be awarded tenure than men. Furthermore, the salaries of women at the end of their academic careers are on average 29 per cent lower than their male counterparts. The impact of taking childcare-related leaves within the existing models of career development in the academy both lengthens time for tenure and promotion and results in a cumulative decrease of salary over time. Meanwhile, for men, having children does not have this kind of effect on their salary.
 
While the majority of Canadian female and male faculty have access to paid parental leave, with some form of top-up, the situation in Ontario suggests that there are similar trends to those in California. In the province, there are close to 2,700 male faculty at the rank of full professor, and approximately 1,600 women. The median salary at that rank for men is $148,375 and for women it is $143,050**. According to available data, at ranks below Assistant Professor, women outnumber men – with 378 women, and 348 men. The UC research indicates that the part-time adjunct faculty category is disproportionately made up of women who are married with children, and there is reason to believe this is also the case in Ontario.  
 
In addition to paid parental leave for both parents, the UC Berkeley research team recommends greater flexibility in the workplace and in tenure and promotion processes, and improved child care assistance. At Berkeley, which recently introduced paid leaves for fathers as well as other new policies that benefited parents, job satisfaction increased.
 
*The research is based on surveys of faculty and graduate students at UC, and U.S. national Survey of Doctorate Recipients.
**Based on Statistics Canada’s 2010-11 University and College Academic Staff System Survey.

Data Check: Ontario’s university funding falls further behind

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The latest release of Financial Information of Universities and Colleges offers little reason for optimism that the Ontario’s university funding gap will be closed any time soon. A brief respite courtesy of the Ontario government’s Reaching Higher plan notwithstanding, per-student provincial operating funding for Ontario’s universities has lagged the average in the rest of Canada by ever greater amounts for almost two decades. By 2011-12, Ontario universities received 35 per cent less operating funding from the provincial government than the average in the rest of Canada.
 
The gap is widening more quickly once the full range of provincial support (beyond basic operating funds) for university activities in teaching, research, and community service is taken into account. In 2000-01, the gap was “only” 20 per cent. It has now increased to 38 per cent.
 
Much of the funding shortfall has been made up with skyrocketing tuition fees; this is well known. However, even after taking into account scholarships paid from operating funds, the contribution from student tuition and fees – high as they are – still leaves a significant gap. In 2000-01, it was a manageable three per cent; in 2011-12 it was 16 per cent.
 
Source: Canadian Association of University Business Officers, Financial Information of Universities and Colleges
Statistics Canada, Postsecondary Student Information System; Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada; Association of Atlantic Universities; Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec, Council of Ontario Universities, British Columbia Higher Education Accountability Dataset

OCUFA hosts Worldviews Conference on Media and Higher Education

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On June 19-21, 2013, OCUFA was please to co-host Worldviews 2013: Global Trends in Media and Higher Education. Over three days, 250 speakers and delegates came together to discuss the relationship between media and higher education, a critical issue for those who study and work in higher education institutions as well as those who make their living covering university and college issues.
 
Participants included students, faculty, administrators, communication professionals, and journalists. The keynotes and panel sessions explored the persistent disconnect between media and the academy; how journalists and academics can work better together; the role of intellectuals in public life; the representation of students and institutions in the media; and the transformative pressure put on higher education by new communications technologies. The perspective was international, including participants from the UK, USA, Nigeria, Kenya, Australia, Egypt, Israel, and South Africa.
 
OCUFA co-organized the conference with the University of Toronto and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE); the Washington-based Inside Higher Ed; and the South Africa and London-based University World News.
 
While no official proceedings from the conference will be produced, you can check out some of the discussions on Twitter using the hashtag #wv2013. For a limited time, the online discussion will be viewable on the Worldviews homepage.

Reality Check: Reducing the upfront student cost of higher education makes good sense

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Talking about tuition fees out of context makes little sense, according to a report on Learning and Earning by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Hugh Mackenzie writes that the role of the income tax system must be taken into account in any discussion of tuition fee policy. In most provinces, government funding is the largest single source of university revenues, so it only makes sense to consider how students and their families contribute not just through tuition but through the taxes they pay.
 
The benefits of university education are public, and not just private, individual “returns” on investment. And the relationship between education and earnings is variable and not consistent. Thinking in terms of the amount of time required to pay back the investment, Mackenzie estimates that eliminating tuition fees in Ontario would add less than two years to the time required for the province to recover its costs through the accrual of real public benefits, such as increased tax revenue from high paid knowledge-based jobs.
 
He also considers the cost of providing a free university education as a proportion of the lifetime taxation gains received by the province and finds that the impact of eliminating tuition fees in Ontario would only increase the cost proportion by 4.4 percentage points. This proportion would still be the second lowest in Canada. Of all provinces, Ontario also experiences the highest rate of return from its public investment. If all provinces were to eliminate tuition, Ontario and Quebec would share that distinction.
 
Some of Ontario’s advantage is because the province continues to underfund universities, but that should not obscure the fact that the tax system already embodies an effective means for people to contribute to the cost of their education in proportion to their private returns. And when tax paid is taken into account, it becomes clear that public subsidies for tuition fees do not amount to a transfer of income from low income to wealthy families, as is often argued. In fact, the opposite is the case.
 
Source: Hugh Mackenzie, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Learning and Earning, June 2013

OCUFA expresses deep concern over cuts to teacher education in Ontario

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As we reported in last week’s OCUFA Report, Ontario has announced plans to cut the amount of per-student funding provided to the province’s teacher education programs. This week, OCUFA wrote a letter to Minister Liz Sandals (Education) and Brad Duguid (Training, Colleges, and Universities) expressing our concerns. The full text of the letter follows:
 
Dear Ministers Duguid and Sandals,

On behalf of the 17,000 faculty and academic librarians that the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) represents, I am writing to express concern about the recent changes to teacher education in Ontario. OCUFA understands that there are currently more students graduating from teaching training programs at Ontario universities than are being employed by Boards of Education in the province. However, the steps taken by the province to reduce the number of students entering and graduating from teaching training programs in Ontario are highly problematic for the continued quality and sustainability of teacher education in the province. 

Changes to teacher training programs were made without meaningful consultation with the post-secondary education sector. As the government moves forward with the implementation of these changes, greater care must be taken to engage with the sector.

The expansion of the length of teacher training programs and the reduction in the number of available spaces by 50 per cent is also accompanied by significant cuts to per-student funding for teacher education. Taken together with the overall decline in per-student funding and the reduction to operating grants through so-called “policy levers” introduced in the 2012 Budget, these continued cuts erode the quality of post-secondary education in this province.  No matter the length of the program or the number of entrants, if per-student funding for teacher training programs is cut, the quality of teacher education will inevitably suffer.

In addition, if the province wanted to address the “oversupply” of teacher training graduates in Ontario, steps must be taken to address programs offered by institutions not funded by the Ontario government which allow students to complete their practical training in Ontario. Even if the province reduces teacher training spaces at Ontario institutions, students will continue to pursue teacher education out of province and at a significantly higher cost.  

Finally, the government’s changes to teacher training echo cuts to medical education programs in the early 1990s, which left Ontario chronically short of qualified family doctors. Governments have a poor record of predicting labour market needs, and changes to teacher education may have significant, and unforeseen, negative effects in the future.  

I sincerely hope that the Ministries of Training, Colleges and Universities and of Education will re-think some aspects of their changes, particularly those that reduce the amount of public funding available to our institutions. I also hope that your ministries will commit to strengthening your collaboration and consultation with the higher education sector to ensure future reforms are in the best interests of students of all ages in our province.

Sincerely,
Constance Adamson, President, OCUFA

Data Check: Ontario universities perform well in terms of graduation rates

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Critics of the productivity of Ontario’s universities need to check their facts.
 
Ontario universities are doing much better than their American peers when it comes to graduation rates. Over the last decade, the overall graduation rate amongst undergraduates in Ontario has been steadily improving. The latest data show it at 81 per cent. Once first professional subjects such as law and medicine are taken out of the mix to ensure comparability with US data, the province-wide graduation rate for 2010 is 80 per cent.
 
The US National Center for Education Statistics recently released data on 2011 retention and graduation rates. The national average amongst students seeking a bachelor’s degree was 59 per cent. Private, non-profit institutions rate of 65 per cent was the best US average by institution type. The average graduation rate across public institutions was 57 per cent. Private, for-profit universities fared even worse, graduating just 42 per cent of its first-time undergraduates within the same time frame.
 
More to the point, Ontario is doing this with considerably less per-student funding than their American peers. In 2011, average per-student public funding at US public four-year institutions was $9,416 and only $8,372 in Ontario. How’s that for productivity?
 
Sources:
National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education
Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, Graduation, Job And OSAP Default Rates