All Posts Tagged With: "McGill University"

Injunction forces smaller, quieter picket lines

McGill student courtesy of Evan Shay on Flickr

The union representing striking support staff workers at McGill University has filed a report with the Quebec Labour Board alleging that the university is using illegal replacement workers, reports Canadian Labour Reporter.

The report followed an investigation by the Quebec Ministry of Labour that found 15 of the 110 workers filling in for striking staff were not managers or otherwise eligible replacements.

Michael Di Grappa, vice-principal of administration and finance for the university, disputes the accusation. “All the contingency actions taken to keep the university operating in its core mission of teaching and research during the MUNACA strike are fully within the law,” he said.

Meanwhile, the university has obtained an injunction to force McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) workers to reduce the size and volume of picket lines in order to allow more access to the school, at least until a hearing on Oct. 3.

Di Grappa told the Montreal Gazette that the school asked for the injunction because of concerns that students were forced off sidewalks by picketers and that the delivery of perishable research items had been impeded.

MUNACA went on strike since Sept. 1. and is seeking what they call “a proper wage scale.”

Canada’s top two improve showings, but the rest fall down

McGill student courtesy of Evan Shay on Flickr

QS World University Rankings has released their Top 300 schools of 2011. This year, Canada’s top two schools, McGill and Toronto, each edged up a notch. So did McMaster and Western Ontario. But every other Canadian school dropped down from their 2010 standing (offered in parentheses) and one school, Laval, fell off the list.

17. McGill University (19)
23. University of Toronto (29)
51. University of British Columbia (44)
100. University of Alberta (78)
137. University of Montreal (136)
144. Queen’s University (132)
157. University of Western Ontario (164)
159. McMaster University (162)
160. University of Waterloo (145)
218. University of Calgary (165)
234. Dalhousie University (212)
256. University of Ottawa (231)
260. Simon Fraser University (214)
292. University of Victoria (241)

About the methodology:

The rankings were derived mainly from a survey of 34,000 academics who ranked the schools from those producing the most world-leading research in their fields to those producing the least. That survey was weighted at 40 per cent. Reputation among employers, derived from a survey of 17,000 managers who hire university grads, counted for 10 per cent. Citations per faculty counted for 20 per cent. Faculty-student ratio (lower is better) counted for 20 per cent. Proportion of international students counted for five per cent. Proportion of international faculty counted for five per cent too.

The Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities, which uses only objective data, like citations per faculty — no reputation surveys were included — found in August that Toronto is the best in Canada, the University of British Columbia is second and McGill University is third.
Click to see how other Canadian universities made the World Top 500 in 2011.

For a complete ranking of Canadian universities, click for the Maclean’s 20th Annual Rankings

Watch for the 21st Annual Maclean’s University Rankings — on newsstands in November.

Classes will go ahead as planned: university

McGill University’s 1,700 non-academic employees went on strike at 6 a.m. this morning. The employees provide course registration, laboratory support, clerical support, record keeping, student residence management, IT support and more.

University classes will go ahead next week. ”You have the right, as a student or an employee, to cross the picket line to get to class or to your work,” the university wrote in a statement. “McGill will ensure that you can enter the campus safely.”

The collective agreement expired in Dec. 2010. MUNACA wants a three per cent wage increase. McGill has offered 1.2 per cent.*

The workers say they also want more secure benefits. ”Unlike other university workers in Quebec, there are no protections for our pensions and benefits at McGill,” wrote McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) president Kevin Whittaker. “The time has come for the university to recognize our hard work and our contribution to the quality of life students enjoy.”

*This post has been updated to remove salary data that was incorrect. Maclean’s On Campus regrets the error.

School raised price by nearly 90 per cent

Photo courtesy of bagriton on Flickr

McGill University will be allowed to charge $32,500 this fall year for its MBA program after the university struck a deal with the Quebec government last week.

Before the 2009-10 school year, the program had cost only $3,400. Last year, they raised the price by nearly 90 per cent to $29,500, prompting the Ministry of Education to fine them $2.1 million for breaking regulations. Quebec requires universities to charge domestic (Quebec) students a uniform rate, which is currently just over $70 per credit for most programs. A typical 30-credit school year costs roughly $2,100.

The new deal redefines the program as a “specialized MBA” with a focus on international business and a “mandatory study trip abroad.” Specialized MBAs are not subject to the same strict regulations. Concordia offers an EMBA with tuition at $34,000. McGill and the HEC Montréal offer a joint EMBA that costs $72,000.

Some student groups have criticized the decision. The Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, the province’s largest student lobby group, and the McGill Post Graduate Students’ Society issued a joint statement describing it as a step towards two-tiered education.

However, another student group — McGill’s MBA Student Association — supports the school. They condemned the government’s fine and released a survey claiming that 70 per cent of students in the program supported the increase.

Line Beauchamp, the Minister of Education, wrote that McGill is not getting special treatment. “This isn’t an exception, because there are other institutions in Quebec that already offer programs with a similar status,” she said.

McGill’s new price may allow it to better compete with other schools. The University of Toronto charges residents $40,000 per year for its MBA program; the University of Western Ontario’s one-year MBA program has a price tag of $73,500 for Canadians.

Wilfred Zerbe, Memorial University’s Dean of Business, suggested in May that tuition fees there should climb too. Currently, Memorial charges MBA students $4,400 per year. He says the school could attract better students and offer more support with tuition fees closer to $10,000 per year.

Anglo students must not consider Bill 101 when writing test

Historians are calling on Quebec to offer better questions on the History and Citizenship exams that Anglophone students must pass in order to graduate from CEGEP.

Sam Allison, a recently-retired history teacher, and Jon Bradley, an associate professor in Education at McGill University suggested in an editorial in the Montreal Gazette earlier this week that the test is extremely flawed. Here’s their argument:

First, English students are asked to use French-language documents to answer essay questions. What if they don’t read French?

Second, they’re asked to respond to questions with words that don’t translate into English like agriculturalism and cooperatism. Those words mean nothing to anglophones.

Finally, in one essay question, they are asked to consider the demographic changes that occurred in the twentieth century “in terms of immigration, migration within Quebec and natural growth.”

That means students are not to consider inter-provincial migration, which means that they are not to consider the effects of Bill 101, also known as the Charter of the French Language.

That bill had, arguably, a much greater impact on the province than other forms of migration. Bill 101 made French the only official language and put many restrictions on English-language schools and employment. Roughly 244,000 English speakers left Quebec in the 25 years following the passage of Bill 101, according to Statistics Canada. Many businesses moved to Toronto.

It’s an part of the province’s history that should not be ignored, write Allison and Bradley. “While many Quebecers may believe that studies of the province’s history should promote a nationalist perspective, this is far outweighed by the right of all children to have a balanced view of our past.”

Lawsuits are shedding light on dubious relationship between medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies

Photograph by Flickr user striatic

When Barbara Sherwin, a McGill University psychology professor, became embroiled in a ghostwriting case in 2009, many wondered how an esteemed academic—one who dedicated her life to researching the relationship between hormones and cognition—could be accused of attaching her name to an article she didn’t write.

Her alleged transgression came to light in a class-action suit involving 8,400 women against the drug company Wyeth (now part of Pfizer). Lawyers representing the women, who claim they were harmed by their hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drugs, discovered that scientific research papers extolling the virtues of the treatment while downplaying potential harm appeared to have been written, not by the academics who signed their name to the papers, but by writers hired by the pharmaceutical company.

According to court documents filed by the plaintiffs, Wyeth paid the Princeton, New Jersey-based medical communications company DesignWrite to produce articles on HRT for publication in academic journals between 1997 and 2003. DesignWrite would write the papers, then approach leading academics to claim authorship for them.

Sherwin’s name appeared in the court documents in the form of DesignWrite correspondence and internal meeting notes. She has, until now, remained silent about her side of the story. But the topic has stayed in the news, as similar cases continue to reveal apparent conflicts of interest between academia and pharmaceutical companies.

Sherwin’s relationship with the pharmaceutical company started innocently enough. In the early 1990s, she was invited to give a presentation about her work on androgens and psychological functioning in women. There, she met a woman named Karen Mittleman during the lunch break. Mittleman introduced herself as a PhD and a former academic who worked in medical communications. The pair hit it off, and kept in touch. “I liked her, and considered her a casual friend,” Sherwin told Maclean’s over the phone from her office at McGill.

Several years later, in 1998, Mittleman called Sherwin to ask if she wanted to write a paper for the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society at the invitation of the journal’s editor. The subject was pharmacological treatment options for age-associated memory loss. Sherwin, an expert on hormones and how they influence memory and mood in people, had just completed a grant proposal on the subject, and said she’d be happy to write the article.

“[Mittleman] told me she would provide support by typing the manuscript and formatting it in the style of that particular journal,” explains Sherwin. The work itself would be based on Sherwin’s notes. In return, Mittleman, a senior writer at DesignWrite, promised to send Sherwin typed drafts for editing, and hard copies of references the professor requested. “I was completely under the impression that [Mittleman] was working for the journal, that it was the journal who hired her.”

What Mittleman never revealed was that her employer, DesignWrite, had a business relationship with Wyeth and other pharmaceutical companies. The ensuing article, which was peer-reviewed and listed Sherwin as its sole author, appeared in the April 2000 edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Sherwin says the work was her own, and that Mittleman had no input on the content beyond typing and formatting Sherwin’s notes. She also says she had no reason to believe there was any problem with the paper—until 2009, when Sherwin became the only Canadian researcher embroiled in the ongoing scandal in the US involving the class-action suit against Wyeth.

A 2009 study found that 7.8 per cent of articles published the previous year in six leading medical journals had at least one ghostwriter. Paul Hebert, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, estimates he rejects between five and 10 manuscripts per year because they were ghostwritten in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies. Blockbuster drugs such as the painkiller Vioxx (pulled from the market in 2004 after it was linked to heart problems), and the antidepressants Paxil and Zoloft, continue to come under scrutiny for citing ghostwritten articles that promote their use. Similarly, in 2004, it was found that the manufacturer of Neurontin used a ghostwriting campaign to market off-label uses.

Sherwin says, “If you’re approached by someone who is the head of marketing for Wyeth, then you know. I got a phone call from Karen saying the journal invited this paper, do you want to write it? This was a person I had known for several years.”

Sherwin says she was ultimately cleared by McGill after an eight-month investigation she describes as “emotionally devastating.” (The university has never formally released the results of its investigation.) The Quebec Order of Psychologists also investigated the allegations against Sherwin, and told Maclean’s “no disciplinary actions were taken.”

Richard Janda, a McGill law professor who became Sherwin’s advisor during the ordeal, says the university concluded no one but Sherwin had any input on the article. McGill also found that Sherwin had no way of knowing Wyeth was involved in the publication, and that the paper did not favour Wyeth’s drugs. (It had one section on estrogen and looked at seven other classes of non-hormonal drugs that might benefit mild cognitive impairment. Sherwin and Janda estimate that just over one per cent of the 163 references in the paper cite studies involving Wyeth products.)

Sherwin was, however, reprimanded for not acknowledging the “editorial assistance” she received. She says she offered to credit Mittleman, who declined, saying, “You did all the work.” Maclean’s tried to contact Mittleman, but she did not respond. In her 2006 court deposition, she claimed that a DesignWrite medical writer wrote the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society paper, but that Sherwin appeared as the author.

When the news of Sherwin’s involvement with DesignWrite broke, the McGill professor released a statement (which she now says was penned by the univsersity’s public relations department) defending her work while admitting, “I made an error in agreeing to have my name attached to that article without having it made clear that others contributed to it. It is an error I regret and which had never occurred before or since.”

Newspaper articles at the time questioned the statement, noting that court documents appeared to reveal that Sherwin had worked with DesignWrite again on another article that appeared in the journal Endocrine Reviews in 2003.“I never published anything in conjunction with DesignWrite after [2000],” Sherwin told Maclean’s via email. “I had told Karen (as a friend) that I had been invited to write a review for another journal in 2000. She volunteered help, which I forcefully declined. She nonetheless sent some unsolicited text to me, which I destroyed upon receipt and never spoke to her again.”

Sherwin also added that the allegation of DesignWrite’s involvement in a second paper was dismissed by McGill. “DesignWrite had clearly tried (and failed) to appropriate my second review,” she wrote to Maclean’s. Sherwin believes the hope was that the first article would lead to more collaboration, and incrementally, more influence on her work.

In a written statement to Maclean’s, DesignWrite defended its collaboration with academics, saying it had never promoted bad science and that it was simply trying to help advance worthwhile research. “It is perfectly normal, acceptable, and ethical for physicians to have substantial assistance in drafting articles,” the statement reads. “The exact amount of that assistance can vary, but as long as the physician author has control over the final product and final approval over the article, the exact amount of assistance provided is not an issue.”

At a University of Toronto conference on ghostwriting held earlier this week, a former ghostwriter, Linda Logdberg, says it was not usual for her to approach academics on behalf of drug companies and withhold information about her relationship with the industry. “I was asked to identify myself as a writer for the medical education company,” she says, adding that her range of involvement with a researcher could be anything from editing a manuscript, to writing the entire thing under a researcher’s byline.

Though the Wyeth ghostwriting cases go back a decade, those who study the problem say it persists. Trudo Lemmens, the University of Toronto law professor who hosted the conference, says biomedical ghostwriting is a public health issue in need of serious attention. “We know that erroneous or wrong use of pharmaceuticals is a leading cause of hospitalization in both the U.S. and Canada, so if ghost-authored publications contribute to that, particularly if they do not accurately represent the evidence, and over-emphasize positive studies, physicians who give their names [to these articles] are indirectly responsible for the prescriptions that are handed out.”

Lemmens is looking at the legal tools that can be used to fight the practice of ghostwriting and hold academics legally and professionally accountable. Ghostwriting is difficult to detect outside of legal discovery during class-action suits against drug companies, he says, and universities are often slow to reprimand their own researchers, who bring prestige and large research grants to their institutions.

In the world of journals, PLoS Medicine has been leading the effort to curb ghostwriting. It found that only 13 of the top 50 medical schools in the U.S. have a policy that prohibits ghostwriting, which Jocalyn Clark, senior editor of the journal, says is similar to the picture here in Canada.

Clark explains that that policies in place at PLoS Medicine now require that all authors must declare their competing interests and all the sources of funding for their work. “Many of the leading medical journals now have competing interest policies,” she says, “but the large bulk of medical and science journals in the world do not have that standard.”

For now, Sherwin’s story reveals just how complex, sophisticated, and murky the relationship between industry and the academy can be. “There’s a certain amount of deviousness that went on here,” she says. “DesignWrite had a publication plan, they were working with pharma. I spent my life staying away from pharmaceutical companies. If [Mittleman] had said there would be an honourarium, if she had mentioned Wyeth’s name, I could have known.”

Proposed law would require 60 per cent of a university’s board members to come from outside the school

The Quebec government appears to be moving ahead with legislation that will change the way every university in the province is run.

Bill 38, currently before the National Assembly would standardize university governance and make universities boards of directors more accountable to the provincial government. It would also require that 60 per cent of a university’s board members be from outside the school and that all boards include an equal number of men and women.

The government began discussing university governance reform in 2008, in the wake of a financial crisis at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

While legislation was first introduced in June 2009, it lingered in committee before dying on the order paper when premier Jean Charest prorogued the National Assembly for one day in February. The day after the Assembly reconvened, Bill 38 was reintroduced.

Now, the law appears to be moving forward once again, albeit slowly. The bill appeared on the agenda of Friday’s legislative session for a second reading. While the session ended before that item was reached, it does seem likely that it will be approved in principle within the next couple days.

Currently, each of Quebec’s universities has a different board structure. For example, Concordia has 40 members on its board, while UQAM’s has 16 members. Each board also has different representation: UQAM’s board includes a representative for local CEGEPs; Concordia and McGill both have representatives of their non-teaching staff on their boards, while UQAM and the Université de Montréal don’t. On the other hand, both UQAM and the U de M have some of their board members appointed by the government, the English-language schools don’t. I could keep going, but you get the idea. The universities like this, they say that they’re each different institutions with different missions, so they should have different governance structures. The province doesn’t agree.

For faculty and students, the most concerning part of the proposed law has been the requirement that 60 per cent of board members come from outside the university. Of Quebec’s six largest universities, Concordia and U de M already have this ratio. UQAM, Université de Sherbrooke, Université Laval and McGill don’t. At Concordia, there have also been concerns that a smaller board would diminish student and faculty representation.

There’s another issue at Concordia, the school is currently in the midst of a review of its governance structure. That process could be rendered completely irrelevant by this law, at a cost of $60,000.

The other big concern, at least at McGill and Concordia, is that under the bill, the province would appoint one member to each university’s board. For schools in the University of Quebec system the province would appoint three board members. For most French-language universities this would actually mean fewer government appointees on their boards.

The propose og law does have some positives though, it includes reasonably strict conflict of interest rules and, perhaps, most interestingly board members would be prohibited from serving more than two terms. There is one caveat to that rule, terms as chair of the board would be counted separately from regular terms; so a board member could serve for six years as a regular board member and another six years as chair. If the bill becomes law, it would see at least eon of the most controversial figures on Concordia’s board forced out quite soon.

There is also an interesting disclosure requirement in the bill, universities would be required to post board members’ meeting and committee attendance records online.

Students back university, criticize lack of provincial bursary support

The majority of McGill MBA students support the program’s high tuition, according to a survey released by the MBA Student Association on Friday.

The release comes just days after the provincial government announced it would be fining McGill $2.1 million for raising MBA tuition without permission. Fees in the program rose from $3,400 to $29,500 last fall. The university has refused provincial funding for the program since the increase.

According to the student association, 70 per cent of those surveyed said that “the program is at a reasonable or below reasonable price.”

Students in the program are no longer eligible for provincial bursaries, in an interview about that issue last month, the president of the MBA Student Association, Pat Tenneriello, told me that the majority of students support the increase “because we see the investment.”

According to the student association, new professors have been hired and the program has already improved in international rankings.

The student association also used the release of the survey to criticize the lack of bursary support. “Our decision to pay the market price for our education should not affect our ability to receive funding in support of our endeavours to become future industry leaders within Quebec,” the release says.

While the Quebec government continued to thaw the tuition freeze in Thursday’s budget, tuition fees for provincially funded programs will still be assessed at a standardized per-credit rate.

Later-in-life schooling ‘is not just growing, it’s growing exponentially.’

When David Prosser, 64, graduated from Ryerson University in June of last year, it was his third time there in a cap-and-gown ceremony. In 2005, after ending a lifelong career at Kodak Canada, he enrolled to train as a fundraising manager at Ryerson’s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, and now works as a development director for a Toronto-based mental health charity. “It was a big change to get from the corporate world to the non-profit,” he says—but his alma mater was there to help.

Prosser is one of an increasing number of students who are trotting back to campus decades after their first graduation, and changing the face of universities across Canada. Mid-career and mature professionals going back to the books are fuelling a boom in adult education that goes well beyond colleges. At the Chang school, enrolment rose by 49 per cent since 2001; at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies (SCS), it’s up 75 per cent since 2007; at the University of Ottawa, it nearly doubled between 2000 and 2009, growing 28 per cent this academic year alone; and at McGill University, it grew by around 6.5 per cent since 2009-2010. When Simon Fraser University (SFU) advertised a free workshop called “Later in Life Career Transitions” around Christmas last year, the 70-spot event was fully booked before New Year’s, and when the school decided to make another 100 seats available, they sold out in a week. “I think it says a lot about the hunger for learning and career options later in life,” says SFU’s dean of lifelong learning Helen Wussow, who added that enrolment at the school was up this year.

Continuing education used to be predominantly the realm of public and private colleges, but universities are now diving into the sector. Many have been offering some continuing education classes for decades, but the recent eye-popping rates of growth reflect a conscious effort to step up those programs. “In the last four years we’ve created a new visual identity for the school and a new brand-awareness effort,” says Almira Mun, strategic marketing director at U of T’s SCS, adding that this included a facelift for course catalogues and publications, and more ads in local newspapers. In 2008, the U of O turned its adult education classes into a new Centre for Continuing Education, which offers both personal enrichment and professional development classes and is housed in a brand-new building with a view of the Parliament Buildings. SFU and McGill are both conducting market research to lay the foundations to expand their offerings for adult learners.

The increased demand for later-in-life schooling is coming from foreigners seeking a quick gateway to the Canadian workplace, mid-career professionals who want to update their skills and, especially, sprightly baby boomers looking for a new career after retirement or some stimulation to keep an aging mind in shape. But regardless of place and year of birth, when skilled workers look for a professional upgrade or intellectual pastime, they increasingly want to do so at the university level, says Serge Blais, director of U of O’s adult ed centre. The sector, he says, “is not just growing, it’s growing exponentially.”

And, along with enrolment, revenue is on the rise. At U of O, for example, it grew by 89 per cent between 2000 and 2009. Other schools declined to disclose financial information to Maclean’s. Yet, with young people’s full-time post-secondary enrolment expected to dip by nine per cent between 2012 and 2025 due to Canada’s aging population, catering to seasoned students looks like a good insurance policy.

There’s another hospital project in Montreal that’s also behind schedule and over budget

The recent story about construction on a new Montreal hospital being a decade behind schedule and massively over budget, before ground has even been broken, has me feeling some deja vu.

Last spring, construction began on a new McGill “superhospital.” That project was originally proposed in 1992 and at one point was scheduled to open in 2005. Now it’s scheduled to open in 2014. It’s over budget and you know what else is familiar, most of the delays were due to political meddling.

While many of the delays caused by Quebec City have affected both projects, some may have been for different reasons.

While the Université de Montréal project has been plagued by delays from the start and has struggled to find a site, the McGill project has had fewer problems. But that may have been the problem, that it would look bad for an “English” hospital to be built before a “French” one. While Premier Jean Charest has denied this, he’s not exactly the most trusted man in Quebec.

The U de M project on the other hand is somewhat higher profile, in terms of Quebec politics, which has led to the projects’ location being the subject of power struggles both between the government and the university and within the government.