POST STRIKE: WHAT’S NEXT
College presidents working to save students’ year
What’s next for Ottawa’s college students?
On Friday, it was unclear just how long Queen’s Park wrangling would stall the passage of backto-work legislation to end this province’s longest college strike.
The legislation, which required unanimous support, failed again Friday, with NDP Leader Andrea Horwath vowing her party would not fast-track the Liberal legislation. Still, the NDP can’t stop it from happening eventually. MPPs were to be recalled today at 1 p.m.
With uncertainty remaining, we asked Algonquin College president Cheryl Jensen and Lise Bourgeois, president at La Cité collégiale, for their thoughts on how back-to-class will, eventually, roll out for Ottawa college students.
Q Assuming the legislation is passed on the weekend, how long before students can get back to class?
Cheryl Jensen: As soon as we get the directive that the legislation has been passed, we will notify the faculty. We’ll have them back for one day and the students will be back the next day. So, if the faculty meet on Monday, the students will be back on Tuesday. If the legislation is passed on Monday, then the students will be back on Wednesday.
Lise Bourgeois: We’re so relieved teachers can come back as early as Monday. But that all depends on the legislation. We would need one day of preparation for the teachers, and the students would be back on the next day. Q Will students be able to finish their year? Jensen: We are confident we will have plans in place for students to finish their year.
Bourgeois: We feel that students will be able to complete their year. We’re thinking of a 13-week fall semester and a 13-week winter semester that would start Jan. 29 and end April 27.
Q How will it work?
Jensen: We have semester completion plans. The deans and chairs will be consulting with their faculty in their specific areas. Plans may not be the same for every program, there may be some variation in each area. But school will not go past the end of April. Students will be in class for what is normally exam week and an additional week, ending Dec. 22. The week of Jan. 2 was to be a turnaround week. We will use that week for classes as well. There will be an additional week at the end of April. We don’t want to go into May because there are lost job opportunities and an additional month of rent for students.
Bourgeois: We would have classes to Dec. 22, with students returning on Jan. 3. The week would be more for tutoring and lab practices, with classes starting the next week. We recommend students attend the Jan. 3 week, but it’s not mandatory. It gives students a chance for a 13-week
fall semester. Q Will courses have the same number of hours?
Jensen: It will be based more on learning outcomes and objectives than strict hour-by-hour.
Bourgeois: It would be pretty much the same number of hours for the students, but the calendar would be organized differently. There would be modified hours to meet the standards and expectations. There may be added hours here and there to make it work. Q What about exams? Jensen: If we don’t have an exam, there will be an evaluation. Bourgeois: La Cité doesn’t have a formal exam week. Exams are included in classes. Q Will you have a winter study week? Jensen: There is no current plan to eliminate study week. Bourgeois: There would not be a February break.
Q Advanced Education Minister Deb Matthews has estimated colleges have saved about $5 million in instructors’ wages — and ordered colleges to create a fund to help students who have faced financial hardship. How much has your college saved? Jensen: That will be released once it is approved by the minister.
Bourgeois: That’s not easy to calculate. We have to reconcile how much we have spent during the strike, and there could be extra costs when the students come back. We know there will be some savings, but it’s not just a matter of adding up the numbers.
Q What will be done with the money?
Jensen: We’re contributing to a hardship fund for any students with expenses above normal. We will have a list of eligible expenses. Keep your receipts. We are here to help.
Bourgeois: At this point, we’re working with the minister to determine how to administer the fund. Common criteria will be established, but colleges’ roles will be determined separately. It has to be equitable and fair for all.
Q Have you changed the withdrawal date without academic penalty for students?
Jensen: For most students, the last day to withdraw without an academic penalty will change from Nov. 10 to Dec. 1 or later, depending on the date classes resume.
Bourgeois: Students who drop out without any academic penalty will have 10 business days to do so after the day they get back to school. Q Some students have been asking for their tuition money back. How do you respond to that? Jensen: The minister is in discussions with Colleges Ontario. Bourgeois: We’re waiting for direction from the ministry. It will be a provincial decision.
Ontario’s college faculty strike has cast a new spotlight on an old issue — the question of whether this province is adequately funding its public colleges.
The union that represents 12,000 faculty across Ontario says colleges are relying too heavily on contract employees to save money and wants to see more full-time teachers hired across the system.
The colleges’ bargaining agent says there isn’t enough money in the system to do that.
“You’re going to add these costs to your business model and somebody’s going to have to pay for it,” said Don Sinclair, CEO of the College Employer Council.
“Students will pick up a portion, and I suspect the taxpayer will, because of the way our funding model works.”
The funding model used to put most of the burden for funding colleges on the government, but has turned in recent decades more to tuition fees as a funding source. In 1992, colleges received 77 per cent of their funding from the government, according to the Canadian Federation of Students — today, the organization says, it’s less than 50 per cent.
“What’s happening in Ontario is critical underfunding for years,” said Kevin MacKay, a member of OPSEU’s college faculty bargaining team. “They’ve gutted the system in terms of funding and they’ve tried to run it on this completely flexible, precarious (employment) model, and the cracks are showing everywhere.”
About one-third of teachers in Ontario colleges are full-time, compared to two-thirds who are contract and don’t work full-time, according to the College Employer Council.
Only full-time teachers are paid for out-of-class work such as prep and meeting with students, which means contract staff work for free if they do the same. That’s a situation that hurts the quality of students’ education, MacKay said.
“I’ve seen students get less and less time with the professor,” he said. “I know that the more contact we have with students the more likely they are to succeed.”
Numbers from the Ontario Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development show that tuition fees have increased much more over the past seven years than government funding to colleges has. In 2010-11, average regular full-time domestic tuition fees were $2,311.
By 2016-17, they had increased 23.71 per cent to $2,859.
In its 2017 budget submission to the province, advocacy group Colleges Ontario wrote that, when adjusted for inflation, per-student revenues from both tuition and government grants have declined every year since 2007.
The government does not tie its operating grants to colleges with inflation, which can sometimes mean its increases fall below the rate of inflation.
From 2002 to 2017, operating grants increased by 45 per cent, to $6,624 per domestic student from $4,600 in 2002-03. The rate of inflation for that period in Ontario was 30.8 per cent.
However, the rate at which operating grants increased slowed significantly post-2010. Increases from 2002 to 2010 equalled 36 per cent, with inflation at 16.5 per cent, while increases from 2010 to 2017 were 5.9 per cent, below inflation at 8.91 per cent.
The office of Deb Matthews, minister of advanced education and skills development, declined a request for an interview but said the ministry is working with colleges.
“The financial sustainability of the college sector is very important to our government,” ministry spokesperson Tanya Blazina wrote in an email. “We have taken major steps to transform the post-secondary sector and to work toward sustainability.”
In 2015, a review resulted in a new formula that allocates moneys based on three criteria: Enrolment; Performance, based on annual surveys and local circumstances; and
Special purpose grants for issues such as improving access for Indigenous students or those with disabilities.
As of 2017, the funding ratio between tuition revenue and operating grants was about 1:1, Blazina said, although she did not provide the precise percentage breakdown.
“It is important to note that a sizable proportion of tuition revenue is also supplied through government grants,” Blazina wrote. About half of college students are receiving “free tuition,” meaning the grants they get from student aid exceeds the cost of their fees, she said.
Although the province doesn’t tie college operating grant increases to inflation, it does index Ontario Student Assistance Program living supports to inflation as well as tuition supports to average tuition hikes.
“While the government has not indexed college operating grants to inflation, over the past 15 years it has made substantial investments in the sector with per-student funding growth exceeding increases that would have been driven by inflation alone,” she wrote.
What’s happening in Ontario is critical underfunding for years .... the cracks are showing everywhere.