The first issue of the CUPE 3903 Unit 2 Chronicle is now available for download:
Jan 04 2009
Can We See The Future of York University in the U.S?
Of possible interest:
How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation
by Marc Bousquet. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
Reviewed by Doug Lorimer (excerpted from the CAUT Bulletin, December 2008)
Those of us who work and study in a contemporary North American university or college are aware of the growing divergence between the idealized past of the academy and present-day realities of the working lives of students and faculty. In his study, How the University Works, Marc Bousquet forces us to lay aside our illusions and come face-to-face with the realities of the regressive changes that have occurred in post-secondary education over the last three decades.
To read the rest of this review, click here.
Jan 04 2009
Quality at Risk: An Assessment of the Ontario Government’s Plans for Graduate Education
March 12, 2007
The government’s plan to expand graduate education by an additional 14,000 students by 2010, although laudable, has put the quality of graduate education at risk. Ontario universities are not hiring enough faculty to ensure graduate students a quality education. Ontario universities need to hire 2,205 additional faculty to reach 1995-96 graduate student-faculty ratios. The government is not providing enough operating funding, not enough graduate-student financial assistance support, and not enough funding to address overdue repairs and expand space requirements. The report demonstrates that failing to involve faculty in the expansion planning leads to oversights.
Keywords: graduate; enrolments; faculty; hiring; hires; funding; maintenance; space; expansion
To read the full report, click here.
Jan 04 2009
Quality in the Balance: Undergraduate Education in Ontario at Risk
May 14, 2007
The quality of undergraduate education in Ontario remains at risk despite the government’s five-year, $6.2-billion Reaching Higher plan, which pledged enough funds to hire more professors. There has been no improvement in student-faculty ratios, however, because inflation-adjusted, per-student funding is still well below the 1990s. Faculty hiring has not kept pace with enrolment increases, so in 2003-04 Ontario had a student-faculty ratio of 27 students to each full-time professor, while American peer institutions had a 15 to one ratio. Ontario needs 11,000 more professors by the end of the decade and needs to make a commitment to recruit full-time, tenure-stream faculty.
Keywords: Reaching Higher; student-faculty ratio; ratio; per student funding; funding; faculty; hiring
To read the full report, click here.
Jan 04 2009
Some Academics More Equal than Others
By Cindy Oliver, Catherine Christie, Petra Ganzenmueller, Geoff Martin, George Davison, Sandra Hoenle, Kelly MacFarlane & Anne Skoczylas (excerpted from the CAUT Bulletin November 2008).
When is an academic not an academic? This is not a rhetorical question, since in most Canadian universities, contract academic staff do not have the same status as a tenured or tenure-track staff, regardless of qualifications and experience.
Remuneration and access to support for scholarly activity are usually the source of employment disadvantage for academics working on per course or limited-term contracts when compared with permanent colleagues. This disadvantage is particularly noticeable when the availability of both in-house and external research money is involved. CAUT’s contract academic staff committee believes academic staff associations should direct their attention to redressing a situation which deters, and often prevents, contract staff from engaging in the vital research required in order to participate in a full academic career.
In conjunction with pro rata hiring policies, access to internal and external funding programs would allow contract staff to achieve a real degree of parity with their tenured colleagues. Only then could the designation “part-time” be a true measure of employment choice rather than a euphemism designed to disguise the exploitation of members of the academic proletariat.
Access to research funds is an important feature of the continuing and uphill struggle with increasingly market-driven university administrations to create a more equitable professional environment for contract academic staff.
To read the rest of this article, click http://www.cautbulletin.ca/en_article.asp?articleid=2714
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