All Posts Tagged With: "Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance"

57% say quality has declined in the past year, according to survey

Ontario universities are crammed with students, and education is suffering, according to a survey of professors and librarians released today. The study, conducted by the Ontario Confederation of Faculty Associations (OCUFA), revealed that 57 per cent of academic staff say education quality has been declining over the past year. OCUFA president Mark Langer calls the results a “warning bell” issued to government from “the people working on the front line in the universities.”

Other results showed that 55 per cent of respondents reported larger class sizes and 38 per cent said retiring or departing faculty had not been renewed. As a result, 38 per cent said that out-of-class support for students had declined, and 39 per cent were using fewer essay-style exams to compensate for larger classes. Fifty-one per cent said that programs, or classes, had been canceled due to budget constraints.

Langer said the survey results were directly linked to government initiatives to encourage more and more students to go to university. “We’re just packing them in,” he said. “It’s not like stamping out widgets. It doesn’t work that way.”

The Ontario student teacher ratio is among the lowest in the country at 26 to one, compared to the national average of 19 to one. Langer also says that Ontario per student funding is the lowest in the country, but he didn’t have exact figures available, calling the numbers “complicated.”

According to the Canadian Press, John Milloy, minister of training colleges and universities, objected to the claims in the report. “Quality is not declining  . . . it’s in fact the opposite  . . . We’ve seen a phenomenal investment in the system,” he said. Operating grants to universities have risen from $1.9 to $3.2 billion since 2002, an increase of 77 per cent.

Langer does not dispute that the government has invested heavily in higher education, but he says any extra funding is being “swallowed” up by disproportionate number of students being admitted. “[Funding] is not keeping pace with demand,” he said. Landger adds that the government is not solely to blame, noting that the recession wreaked havoc on university endowment funds and pension plans. When asked if OCUFA would support lowering the number of students admitted to Ontario universities, he dismissed the idea. “We’re certiainly ready to educate them, but give us the support.”

Bonnie Patterson, president of the Council of Ontario Universities, agrees that universities are underfunded, but says that the OCUFA survey failed to account for the many out-of-class programs she says universities provide. She says institutions have shifted some resources towards support for students from underrepresented groups and international students. “And yes there has been some trade-offs in the classroom,” she said.

Meaghan Coker, president of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, says the survey does not account for the quality of teaching in the classroom, focusing too much on measures like student teacher ratios. “It depens less on class size, and more on the practices professors use,” Coker said. She is referring to “active learning” versus “passive learning” and says even in a class of 250, a professor, properly trained, could be effective.

Why increasing participation rates might not lead to economic growth

If there is one thing that higher education advocates agree on is that without an ever increasing infusion of public money, Canada is destined to become some backwards failed state. The notion that increasing participation rates will confer untold riches is so widely accepted that the 2009 edition of the Millennium Scholarship Foundation’s The Price of Knowledge stated, “that it seems unnecessary to review it again.”

That’s right, reviewing evidence to support a conclusion is “unnecessary.” The trouble with the argument that participation rates need to rise to ensure a sound economic future is that such analysis often ignores the individual characteristics of people who pursue education. Take one of the the latest sops to the education-equals-growth-thesis, coming  from the Ontario Undergraduate Students’ Alliance in a report titled Ontario’s Knowledge Economy: The Economic Impact of Post Secondary Education. Among other things, the report recommends that Ontario focus on “increasing participation” in higher education.

Nowhere does OUSA consider the individual characteristics of students, or, the question of whether people who pursue an education possess certain traits like intelligence and motivation that would compel them to be productive citizens regardless of what bits of paper they have acquired. Instead the report makes the same tired old claims:

Higher education has been described variously as the “silver bullet”, “keystone” or a “gateway”, but more than anything else, it is simply the only way to ensure a bright future for the people of Ontario.

The evidence?

In 2004, TD Bank Group published a report demonstrating that a university or college diploma would lead to a 12-28% return on investment for the student. The report further showed that a university educated worker’s weekly earnings are on average sixty-one percent higher than their counterparts with only a high school education. The Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation (CMSF) recently completed a thorough investigation of the benefits of higher education and found that, over 40 years, a bachelor’s degree holder in Ontario will earn $769,720 more than someone with only a high school education

The conclusions drawn from analysts such as Roger Martin or James Milway of the Ontario Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity, is that the larger rate of return enjoyed by university graduates is because higher education simply makes workers more productive. Consequently, we can measure the economic impact of education simply by looking at wages. To reap these rewards, we just have to buck up and send everyone to university or college.

This of course requires we ignore anything we might learn from the supply and demand of labour. The fact that pipefitters earn more than biology graduates might mean that pipefitters are more productive. But, it seems much more credible to suggest that pipefitters have a specialized skill that is in short supply. Or as it was put in the 2007 Maclean’s rankings issue: “Our society has a bias against working with your hands, and increasingly pushes everyone to go to university, looking down on those who choose other routes.”

Today the McGuinty Liberal government in Ontario will be releasing what should be their last budget before going to the polls this October.  They may do a mini-budget in the late summer or right after Labour Day but there is a decent chance this will be their election budget. It should be interesting to see [...]

Today the McGuinty Liberal government in Ontario will be releasing what should be their last budget before going to the polls this October.  They may do a mini-budget in the late summer or right after Labour Day but there is a decent chance this will be their election budget.

It should be interesting to see what the McGuinty Government offers to post-secondary students.  I am not expecting much considering that last year’s budget did give quite a bit to the PSE sector.  I also lowered my expectations after the disappointment I felt in the federal budget from Canada’s "New Government" (I do not know if something is new after a year).

The Conservative Budget was clearly designed to appeal to the voters they think they can capture: Ontarians living in the 905-belt. The suburbs surrounding Toronto and are fairly affluent and that is why the Conservatives put $600 million into RESP tax breaks instead of putting the money directly into the system. This will do nothing to assist lower and lower-middle class students. You have to have the money to save in order to get any tax break.  Where I grew up people just make it by and they do not have the money to save for PSE.  They barely, if at all, have the money to afford items that have become educational necessities such as a lower-end computer.  Never mind affording monthly internet access and maintenance.

Here is what I want to see in the Ontario budget:

- An increase in OSAP assistance: the government was right when they increased the maximum amount of provincial financial assistance available each year. The nice thing was that they kept everything above $7000 as grant money. The maximum loan repayable for 8-months of study remained the same. However, the maximum is still not enough. At McMaster, it does not cover the cost of tuition and residence for eight months. There are still the costs of textbooks, supplies, and other expenses. The reality is that each year, I have more expenses but I get no more funding from the government. With inflation, it becomes harder and harder to make ends meet. The government must move quickly and increase the OSAP maximum. I could even live with an inflationary increase of the $7000 cap.

- An allocation to GO Transit to keep fares steady for students: Many students rely on GO Transit to commute to school. With the increasing numbers of students, transit is needed to keep universities from paving more green space for parking. Also, the 407 express is often overcrowded for McMaster and York students.

- Better tuition regulation: The government is right to say that tuition should increase much like the cost of bread but the current increases are above inflation. The government should step forward to ensure that tuition only increases by inflation. They should put forth the funds to fill the gap between inflation and the current increase. Of course, they did make a lot of investments last year so I do not expect this to occur this year. If they promise it for next year, I am going to dismiss the promise. They can say whatever they want about the 2008/2009 budget, but there is no guarantee they will be in government, so it is meaningless.

In the run up to the budget, student lobby associations have been busy sending out news releases.

The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance was first on March 19th with Federal budget raises Ontario students’ expectations for McGuinty’s pre-election offering on Thursday.  The Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario released a pre-budget poll showing opposition to tuition fee increases on March 20th. The poll is available on the CFS website here.  They have nice slides showing the outcome of the poll here.  I called them and they sent me a copy of the questions asked and the breakdown of answers.  I have uploaded this here. Yesterday, the CFS sent this release: Student budget watch – Student representatives available for comment on 2007 Ontario Budget. The College Student Alliance wired this College Students Expecting More from McGuinty on Thursday.  So far nothing from the Council of Ontario Universities, which is the lobbying organization representing the administrations of Ontario universities.

The budget is available on the Government of Ontario Budget Site at 4pm EDT today.

I look forward to hearing the Council of Ontario Universities talk about universities having budget deficits, how this budget will not be enough to help them, how they are going to have to make cut-backs, and basically how the sky is falling for them.

Next Saturday we will see just how poor universities really are.  March 31st is "Salary Disclosure Day" in Ontario.  We will find out exactly how much university presidents and senior administrators are paid.  By looking at the salary of my university president at McMaster, Peter George, over the past couple of years, it seems that the university is doing alright.