At OCUFA’s May Board Meeting, members adopted an official policy on collegial university governance. The policy statement, developed by OCUFA’s University Governance Committee, puts forward a set of principles to guide collegial governance at Ontario universities. The guidelines are informed by a comprehensive review of relevant research and the 2018 OCUFA university governance survey completed […]
On April 11, the 2019 Ontario Budget was tabled. Given the track record of the Ontario government to date, this budget delivered what OCUFA expected: a continued attack on workers’ rights, university autonomy, and public services, including postsecondary education. The overall postsecondary education and training sector budget is projected to be cut by $700 million, […]
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 […]
In early 2018, OCUFA formed an ad hoc committee on university governance with a mandate to collect data on the current governance practices of Ontario universities and articulate a vision for collegial governance. This initiative resulted from an increasing concern among faculty associations about the erosion of collegial governance at Ontario’s universities. The committee’s research […]
The report of the OCUFA Working Group on Student Questionnaires on Courses and Teaching (SQCT) has now been released. Prompted by increasing reports of the misuse of results and the harassment of faculty through anonymous comments, and by suggestions in the policy community that SQCT scores be used as university “performance” metrics, OCUFA established the […]
TORONTO, February 6, 2019 – A new report published by a working group of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations exposes substantial issues with student questionnaires on courses and teaching (SQCTs), including endemic bias and systemic discrimination. These end-of-term student questionnaires are common practice at universities across Canada. The report finds that student questionnaire […]
The report of OCUFA the Working Group on Student Questionnaires on Courses and Teaching (SQCT) has now been released . Prompted by increasing reports of the misuse of results and the harassment of faculty through anonymous comments, and by suggestions in the policy community that SQCT scores be used as university “performance” metrics, OCUFA established the […]
A new survey by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has found that most academic staff working on contract at Canadian universities aren’t employed that way by choice. According to the survey: Over half of respondents want a tenure-track university or full-time, permanent college job. Women and racialized contract academic staff work more hours per course, per […]
On Saturday, May 12 and Sunday, May 13, OCUFA held its final Board of Directors meeting of the 2017-18 academic year. During the weekend, board members discussed the organization’s current priorities – good jobs and vibrant universities, university funding, and capacity building – with a focus on the postsecondary issues that were likely to receive […]
TORONTO – Ontario’s faculty and academic librarians are concerned that the 2018 Ontario Budget continues to underfund the province’s universities. Ontario’s universities receive the lowest per-student funding in Canada and the government’s decision not to meaningfully invest in core operating grants threatens the quality of education. The lack of increased funding to support the government’s […]
Last summer, OCUFA developed a survey to gauge faculty interest in eCampusOntario’s new Open Textbook Library. Now, eCampusOntario is conducting their own survey to learn more about how Ontario educators currently select and use course content and textbooks in their teaching and learning. As part of the survey, eCampusOntario is hoping to get a better […]
The Council of Universities (COU) recently released the latest report from its Faculty at Work project. The Composition and Activities of Ontario Universities’ Academic Workforce updates and extends the Preliminary Report released in 2014 to include a focus on the composition of the academic workforce. It constitutes the first serious effort to use administrative data to produce a picture of the numbers of contract faculty employed […]
Performance data and metrics are increasingly being used to make decisions in postsecondary education. The new issue of Academic Matters – now available online – examines the significance of these developments and how they impact universities, faculty, research, and students. Does a focus on metrics in higher education serve to optimize postsecondary education systems and make them more […]
Members of the Laurentian University Faculty Association (LUFA) faced huge challenges in this round of bargaining. The university administration was demanding serious concessions on many issues, including pensions, workload, and core faculty rights. The administration’s inability to provide essential data, delays in bargaining, and the employer’s initial refusal to agree to mediation dates layered procedural […]
Last month we asked OCUFA Report readers to tell us what they thought about eCampus Ontario’s new Open Textbook Library , which establishes a provincial repository of Open Educational Resources (OERs) from a range of disciplines, which faculty can freely use and adapt for the classes they teach. Thank you to everyone who participated! The results from the […]
