Ontario colleges at a crossroads

THE SPECTATOR’S VIEW

The strike that hit Ontario’s 24 community colleges and cancelled classes for 230,000 full-time students is not your run-of-the-mill labour dispute.

Yes, there are two widely diverging and entrenched sides. But this particular labour dispute is extraordinary for one big reason. The 12,000 striking college professors, instructors, counsellors and librarians have an ambitious, far-reaching goal that goes far beyond wages and benefits. They want nothing less than to change the business model for the province’s community college system so there are more full-time professors with more power. Represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union, they’re calling for a drastic reduction in the percentage of part-time instructors at the colleges and an increase in the number of full-time teaching positions.

In recent years, colleges have increasingly turned to cheaper, part-time instructors to save money. The union says part-timers now make up 70 per cent of all college teachers and want that number reduced to no more than 50 per cent. The college’s bargainers — the College Employer Council — see things differently and make their calculations based on the number of teaching hours, not the number of teachers. By their measure, half the teaching is already done by full-time professors. Only 30 per cent is done by contract instructors while part-time employees, who are also union members, account for a fifth of the teaching.

Whatever numbers you pick, the fact remains the union wants more full-time professors. And meeting its demands would carry a hefty price tag — $250 million more a year, according to the Employer Council.

Now the question for Ontario is not simply whether the strikers deserve what they want. It’s whether those demands will deliver a better education for college students and justify spending an additional $250 million more a year on them.

If the answer to those last two questions is “yes,” someone has to figure out where to find the money. No one can expect tuition fee hikes to cover all or even most of that higher cost. Clearly, the provincial government — read taxpayers — would have to contribute more. The province is far more generous in funding universities than colleges. Yet the distinction between the two has blurred. Colleges now grant degrees and their professors conduct research.

Meanwhile, in this era of new, disruptive technologies, when the very nature of Canada’s economy is in flux and the challenges facing young people trying to enter the workforce are huge, community colleges have a greater role in the education system.

College management can’t fix everything on its own. Whatever happens in the current strike, the Ontario government needs to rethink the province’s colleges system and how it is supported.