Newsletter
March 2002
Announcements
Executive Committee Elections
A call for nominations to the USFA Executive Committee has gone out. Nomination forms must be received by the Association Secretary in the Faculty Association Office, Room 20, Education Building, by 4:00 p.m. Friday, March 21, 2003.
109 to 1
On February 14, the Faculty Association forwarded to President Peter MacKinnon all of the letters we have received from faculty members about integrated planning. Of the 110 letters, 109 supported the USFA call for a moratorium on the present Integrated Planning Process. The vast majority also agreed with the entire list of what should be included in a proper planning process. If you didn't have an opportunity to get your letter sent to the USFA office, please feel free to send it directly to the President.
The USFA Executive would like to extend a special thank you to Paul Bidwell, Susan Gingell and Terry Matheson for allowing us to publish their comments from our February 3rd Forum in this edition of our Newsletter.
CHAIR'S REMARKS
The Executive and staff of the USFA, as well as many of our members, have, as usual, been extremely busy on a variety of matters. However, because the Integrated Planning Process has become a major issue on campus, I will devote my remarks to that topic for this newsletter.
In recent weeks, we have received responses from both University Council and President MacKinnon to our call for a suspension of the present Integrated Planning Process. Members will recall that, in part, we are seeking the suspension of the process until it has been restructured in conformity with The University of Saskatchewan Act, 1995. Lest anyone thinks that we are overstepping the jurisdiction of the Faculty Association by insisting that the role of University Council be paramount and that the decision-making bodies, the Provost's Committee on Integrated Planning (PCIP), the Administrative Committee on Integrated Planning (ACIP), and the Integrated Planning Office (IPO), have the legal authority to act, let me articulate why the Faculty Association has become involved with this issue.
First, our concern comes from you, our members. Over the past three years or so, we have consistently heard from our members that workload is high and morale is low, that we as faculty are undervalued and too little appreciated, and that stress is becoming overpowering. Flowing from that, the loss of some 120 faculty over a decade has obviously contributed to these problems, as have the myriad administrative exercises required of us by the University administration. When so many of our members share the same concern, our legal duty of fair representation obliges us to respond.
Consequently, we have placed workload and faculty complement on the bargaining table for negotiating a new collective agreement. Unfortunately, thus far, the University bargaining team has not responded in any positive way on these issues. We must clearly state that it will be extremely difficult to achieve a new collective agreement without some significant improvement to the current situation. Workload and its obvious relative, faculty complement, are quintessentially collective bargaining matters. We need only point to the fact that several other faculty associations in Canada have dealt with the same issues at the bargaining table. Job action and eventual settlements on precisely these issues have occurred at the University of Manitoba, Dalhousie University, Universit Laval, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier University.
Inasmuch as our collective bargaining position has been to address workload and faculty complement, we must therefore respond to the Provost's White Paper on Integrated Planning and the processes outlined in it. Its central thrust would be to centralize decision-making on academic priorities and the resources necessary to achieve those priorities. Along with the processes, the document called for a freeze on filling current faculty vacancies except in accordance with certain procedures spelled out therein. While we acknowledge that there have been some changes, both to the planning process itself and to the so-called hiring freeze, there is great unevenness across the University about whether academic units are allowed to recruit or not. From the information we have gleaned, some units have been successful; others have not. Consequently, we must continue to assert our position. Our collective bargaining position would be futile if, meanwhile, the Integrated Planning Process unfolded.
In addition, there are provisions in our Collective Agreement and in law which provide us with the authority and jurisdiction to take a position on the Integrated Planning Process. For example, article 10.1 commits the University and the Association to complying with all federal, provincial, and municipal laws. It should be added that, even in the absence of that article, one would suppose that both parties would act in compliance with the law. Similarly, the Collective Agreement contains direct references to the role of University Council, which even under the recent modifications to the Integrated Planning Process, will not have the central authority over academic planning that it must have under The University of Saskatchewan Act, 1995.
Finally, employment equity is not mentioned at all in the Provost's White Paper on Integrated Planning. We are pleased that the draft Faculty Complement Plan now does refer to the need to include employment equity in faculty renewal, recruitment, and retention but this is a late addition. We have stated on several occasions that we see this as integral to faculty renewal and as an opportunity to develop a more diverse faculty. In spite of the acknowledged improvement via the Faculty Complement Plan, we point out that, by law and by the Collective Agreement, the University is obliged to implement employment equity. The Federal Contractors Program and the University's agreement with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission are legally binding, as is the Memorandum of Agreement at page 112 of the Collective Agreement.
In closing, I wish to state that the Executive of the Faculty Association has no desire to move beyond our own jurisdiction. We are simply asserting and protecting our jurisdiction and the interests of our members. We also have no desire to engage in conflict with either University Council or the University administration. We view university governance as a sharing of authority between the Board of Governors and University Council. Through the Board of Governors, the administration collectively bargains with the Faculty Association and other unions on the terms and conditions of employment. University Council has authority over academic matters. We respect this division of authority. But we will be vigilant in protecting the interests of our members. In particular, we must be clear that, if decisions are made that are not in accordance with legal authority, we shall, if necessary, resort to the processes open to us, including the grievance procedure, to seek remedies.
RESPONDING TO CANADA'S INNOVATION AGENDA
Prepared by USFA Staff
When we tie discovery research too closely to development, we force our university scientists to run while hobbled in a three-legged race, one leg too nearly tied to industry.
Nobel laureate John Polanyi
Despite numerous calls by academics to free university research from the influence of industry, the federal government, in its bid to move Canada from 15th to 5th place in the world in Research and Development spending by 2010, continues to bind universities to industry through its self-styled "Innovation Agenda." The government outlined this Innovation Agenda in two white papers, issued in February 2002, entitled "Achieving Excellence: Investing in People, Knowledge and Opportunity" and "Knowledge Matters: Skills and Learning for Canadians."
The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) has responded enthusiastically to Canada's Innovation Agenda. So enthusiastically that it has entered into a framework agreement with the federal government. The "Framework of Agreed Principles on Federally Funded University Research" was issued by the Federal government and AUCC on November 18, 2002 at the National Summit on Innovation and Learning. In the preamble the parties agree "to formalize their understanding of how they will work together to advance research, knowledge transfer including commercialization, and innovation" (p. 1). Consequently, the framework commits Canadian universities "to double the amount of research they perform and triple their commercialization performance" [emphasis added] (p. 1).
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), in its response to Canada's Innovation Agenda, has expressed deep concerns about the growing commercialization of university research. The need for more full-time, tenured faculty can only be achieved through enhanced core public funding and the proposed commercialization will have adverse affects, especially for disciplines that are not market-oriented such as the humanities or the arts. Moreoever, even for disciplines where commercialization is possible, curiosity-driven research is much more effective at generating new ideas than is targeted research.
What does this emphasis on commercial viability mean for institutions of higher learning? Will accessible post-secondary education be possible? Will important research questions that lack the promise of short-term commercial gain be marginalized? Will the receipt of targeted research dollars free up base-budget funding or will it mean less in operating grant dollars? With institutional specialization, will Canadian post-seondary students still be ensured of consistently high standards which result in a good education wherever they go in the country?
The two innovation papers include among their stated goals: ensuring that teaching and research capacities are maintained and expanded in the face of faculty retirements and worldwide competition for talent; increasing the supply of highly qualified people with the skills required by employers; at least tripling key commercialization performance outcomes; and specializing of universities in research niches as a means of developing nationally and internationally recognized expertise.
The Skills paper specifically recognizes the need to strengthen post-secondary education and proposes that the government adopt as a national goal the principle that all qualified Canadians have access to post-secondary education. To achieve this goal the paper proposes targets such as 100% of high school graduates having the opportunity to participate in some form of post-secondary education; within the next decade, 50% of 25 to 64 year-olds having a post-secondary credential; within the next decade, doubling the number of apprentices; and increasing the admission of Masters and PhD students at Canadian universities by an average of 5% per year through to 2010.
These documents outline lofty goals, but they are relatively silent on how to achieve them. Acknowledgement of the necessity of strenghtening accessibility to post-secondary educatation does not provide insight on how this can happen in the face of rising tuition. Increasingly universities are looking to tuition to fill gaps in operating grants. There is a failure to recognize that reduced public funding and higher tuition fees are the key culprits in limiting access. For its part, the U of S, in The Provost's White Paper on Integrated Planning states that "it is likely that tuition fees will increase at a steady rate and, in selected disciplines, increase at a marked rate" (p. 12).
In order to strive for the suggested goal of increased numbers of students in Masters and PhD programs, universities will have to ensure that they are providing, first and foremost, a high-quality undergraduate education. An important question to ask is: will the quality of the undergraduate experience at the U of S be diminished if the full-time faculty complement is not increased or is skewed toward those disciplines that stand to benefit from the push toward commercialization? As stated in The Provost's White Paper on Integrated Planning, "New resources devoted to an increased faculty complement should be aimed principally at research programs that will attract graduate students" (p. 10).
The Innovation Agenda fails to address the need for increased core operating funding to achieve its goals even though it emphasizes expanding the research capacities of universities and colleges and increasing educational opportunities for Canadians. In its February 18th budget, the federal government increased support for research granting councils, as it consistently has in recent years, but the reduction of core operating funding over the past decade continues to have a profoundly negative impact on research and teaching.
While the government's innovation strategy recognizes the serious challenge facing universities and colleges regarding faculty renewal and retention, the innovation papers offer few ideas as to how colleges and universities can respond to this challenge. Additionally, here at the U of S, we are further challenged by conditions placed on faculty hiring as outlined in the Provost's White Paper.
The innovation papers have an emphasis on "excellence" as the cornerstone of new federal funding for the granting councils which should be viewed in the least as problematic. "Excellence" is becoming increasingly synonymous with the government's narrow definition of "innovation" as simply the process of developing new products for the market place.
What would be wrong with defining "excellence" in terms of the quality of the education that students receive and the quality of the research performed by faculty members? To see excellence only in terms of the commercial products of research is surely to miss the essence of a good university. Canada needs a rejuvenation of the post-secondary sector that sees access to good education as an essential component and where faculty members and students are encouraged to think and research in innovative areas without regard for the commercial viability of their results.
Vox
VOX is the faculty association publication that literally gives VOICE to the concerns and commentary of faculty. The need for such voicing is surely as great as it has ever been. However, VOX has been silent because there has been no Editorial Board. Although the USFA executive allocates the financial resources required to publish VOX, the views expressed in VOX will not necessarily be those of the USFA Executive. An Editorial Board determines the material published.
Help ensure that a diversity of voices is heard on a range of important issues. Faculty apathy is a myth; faculty engagement needs to be demonstrated in order to be better understood. Do you have an idea or concern you would like to explore with colleagues and share with the university community? Are you interested in being part of the Editorial Board for VOX? For further information, please contact Johanne at the USFA office (5610 or johanne.brassard@usask.ca).
EQUITY AND INTEGRATED PLANNING
Susan Gingell, Professor of English and of Women's and Gender Studies
My thoughts on the place of equity in the Integrated Planning (IP) process are those of a faculty member who has been heavily involved in the process at the departmental level because as English Department Research Chair, I am a member of my department's Planning and Advisory Committee. In the last few years, I've participated actively in putting together a 5-year plan for the Department, only to be met with the demand to produce--in a ridiculously short period of time--a four year plan for IP, using a different set of ground rules than had pertained for the 5-year plan, and then the demand immediately to begin producing documents for Systematic Programme Review (SPR), a process that I also have to participate in at three committee levels within the Department: Research, Planning and Advisory, and Faculty. Planning and related administrative work have thus taken over more and more of my life, eating away further at what little family and leisure time I have.
When I heard the Faculty Association was arguing that the IP process was possibly illegal and otherwise so flawed that we needed to begin again, I confess to feeling frustrated and tired, very frustrated and very tired. How am I supposed to be more research intensive, something I'd dearly love to be, when I am constantly being required to do more and more planning? Where do I get the energy to keep my teaching up-to-date and invigorated? But the more I thought about the process at the instigation of the Faculty Association and the more I experienced the fallout in my own department that came in significant part from our not having sufficient time to consult and discuss the plan in our normal democratic ways, the less confidence I had in the current IP process. When foundational documents are not in place and the IP process is already well advanced, thoughtful faculty have to wonder how solidly based what we're building is going to be, and the demand that some core departments create a four-year plan just before their review processes begin seems so patently wrong-headed as to cast further doubt on how well thought-through Integrated Planning is at this university.
If we are going to start the IP process over again as the Faculty Association suggests we should, one further flaw in the process that needs to be addressed is the absence of any significant reference to equity in the Administration's documents and directives guiding the process. Only once in the President's Renewing the Dream document or the Provost's White Paper on Planning does the word equity appear. As the President's pamphlet winds down, the word equity does make a single, brief appearance in the last principle stated in the section headed "Cultivate an environment of collegiality and trust": "We will continue to be driven by principles of human dignity and fairness in all we do, including strategies for equity and diversity, in education, employment, and all our activities" (Renewing the Dream [9]). Positioned here, it has the flavour of an after-thought, not an up-front principle guiding the IP process. A rhetoric of diversity replaces a serious commitment to equity in the Administration's documents, and the word diversity is not necessarily tied to the kind of diversity envisioned by equity programs, especially when diversity is used in phrases like "we will. encourage a diversity of faculty talent" (Renewing the Dream [5]), which is the one place that the word is used in the president's description of the plan for attracting and retaining outstanding faculty. The Provost's White Paper on Integrated Planning when it talks about attracting and retaining outstanding faculty doesn't even mention diversity, let alone equity. Similarly, the word diversity has ousted the word equity in statements of plans in relation to the future student body.
Both the President's and the Provost's documents recognize the responsibility to provide "access programming and support structures for Aboriginal and international students" (Provost's White Paper 10; see also Renewing 8), but nowhere are visible minority Canadians, people with disabilities, or women mentioned. Even more tellingly, nowhere in the templates that structured the composition of department plans was there any requirement for departments to show how their plans would help them provide access programming and support structures for the groups that are mentioned, and of course there was no sense that departments needed to demonstrate that their plans would help them reach employment and education equity goals. If units had made little or no progress in attracting and retaining members of any one equity group, this Administration showed no leadership in requiring those units to address that deficiency.
Is this absence of concern about equity the result of our doing so well in meeting equity goals? Surely some progress has been made, hasn't it?
Undoubtedly there are more Aboriginal people, visible minority persons, and women on faculty and in our undergraduate and graduate student bodies than there were say 10 years ago. Whether proportional gains have been made for people with disabilities is less clear.
Here are the latest available statistics from the University of Saskatchewan Human Resource Information System on our full-time faculty complement:
JOB GROUPS IN-SCOPE FACULTY 2001-02
All: 947 Aborig.: 12 With Dis.: 13 Vis. Min.: 118
F: 262 F: 9 F: 5 F: 22
M: 685 M: 3 M: 8 M: 96
F: 27.6% Aborig.: 1.3% With Dis.: 1.4% Vis.Min.: 12.4%
These figures when compared with those for the previous year represent fractional to small increases in all categories except for people with disabilities, the largest increase coming in the percentage of female faculty (+2.3). However, when the figures on female faculty for our university are compared with those from other Canadian universities, we are shown to be lagging behind. The latest available statistics from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Status of Women Committee (for 2000-2001) show that nationally women represented 28.6% of faculty at the time the University of Saskatchewan was sitting at 25.3%. Moreover, in the woefully inequitable distribution of Canada Research Chairs (CRC) across the country, the University of Saskatchewan is also behind the lamentable national average of 16.5% of chairs going to women, only 1 of our 11 (9%) chair-holders being female. I tried to get statistics on the other equity-seeking groups as chair-holders, but the CRC web site provides no break-down.
The University of Saskatchewan salary figures for 2001-02 as made available by the Human Resource Information System are as follows:
JOB GROUPS IN-SCOPE FACULTY 2001-02
AVERAGE SALARIES
All: 84,405.18 Aborig.: 65,646.50 With Dis.: 86,071.38 Vis. Min.: 80,834.00
F: 72,793.23 F: 68,755.89 F: 80,947.40 F: 65,414.73
M: 88,846.55 M: 56,318.33 M: 89,273.88 M: 84,367.58
The latest University of Saskatchewan salary figures show some huge disparities across the groups, the group faring the worst being Aboriginal men (who earn about $28,000 less than average), followed by visible minority women (who earn $19,000 less), while women earn approximately $16,000 less in average salary than men. No doubt these statistics have much to do with levels of qualification and experience, but do we know how much? Are we taking responsibility for the institutional racism, sexism, and ableism that allowed this situation to develop in the first place? And even more critically are we energetically pursuing programmes of pay, employment, and educational equity to ameliorate the situation? Why is it that our equity statistics are not part of the common knowledge at the university and that whenever a faculty member wants to know where we stand on equity matters both internal to the institution and in relation to other Canadian institutions, it falls to that faculty member to expend the energy to get that information. Maybe we need a countdown to equity publicity model based on the countdown to septoplasty model of Star-Phoenix columnist Les Macpherson, but one that is communally and societally rather than individually beneficial.
What the statistics on faculty complement and salaries mean is that equity is still a pressing issue on this campus, but the planning documents suggest it has effectively fallen off the administration's radar. Why does this situation matter for IP? It matters because in the super-heated competition to replace retiring faculty members, we don't look terribly attractive to groups who represent a bigger and bigger portion of the candidate pool. Yet the Administration said nothing in the planning documents that guided departmental submissions to make departments feel that increasing the pool of Aboriginal candidates for positions in their discipline is an urgent matter, requiring innovative thinking; and the Administration isn't asking how the department plans will enable them to recruit and retain more Aboriginal teacher-scholars, and more who are female, belong to a visible minority, or have a disability. Nor did the documents guiding IP ask departments to plan for education equity, despite the stated goal of achieving a more diverse student population.
In the past, the slow progress toward meeting employment equity goals was explained by apologists as the result of there being so few openings. With the wave of retirements coming (a wave that looks to be exacerbated by a growing tendency of overworked and increasingly demoralized faculty in some sectors of the University to take early retirement), whatever legitimacy that argument may have had will totally disappear. In the immediate future, the wave of retirements means we will have the chance to make major progress towards making this institution a more equitable place and enrich our educational and research programs as a result. The question is, will we seize that chance or will we be satisfied to use a rhetoric of diversity to front a business-as-usual operation?
Federal budget fails to make the grade on education
(Ottawa - February 18, 2003) Today's federal budget is earning mixed grades from the organization representing the country's professors and academic staff.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers says the budget's emphasis on new social spending is long overdue, but that Finance Minister John Manley has trouble earning a passing grade when it comes to meeting the educational needs of Canadians.
CAUT president Victor Catano said he welcomes the new federal spending on health care, but is concerned about the lack of accountability in federal transfers and notes that, even with today's increases, program spending as a share of the economy remains near post-war lows.
"The Liberals eliminated the deficit mainly by cutting programs like unemployment insurance, health care, post-secondary education and social assistance," Catano says. "At best, what we've seen today is just a down payment on what's really needed."
While he is pleased to see the creation of the Canada Health Transfer as recommended by the Romanow Commission, Catano is disappointed the government did not use this opportunity to create distinct funds for post-secondary education and social assistance.
"Until we have separate funding envelopes for all three programs, the Canadian public won't have any accountability over how federal dollars are being spent," said Catano.
Catano adds he is also disappointed with the limited measures announced in the budget directed at universities and colleges. Among the positive initiatives were the creation of the Canada Graduate Scholarship Program, and an increase in funding for the granting councils, although CAUT had urged that the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council receive a more substantial increase. The government also plans to provide ongoing support for the indirect costs of university research, but Catano says the first priority should be to meet the core funding needs of universities and colleges. Overall, the total amount provided for post-secondary education in the budget represents just a fifth of what would be needed to restore funding to the levels of the early 1990s.
"The real problem we're struggling with is the reduction in core operating grants to universities and colleges," explained Catano. "As long as the federal government continues to ignore this reality, there just won't be enough funds to keep tuition fees down or to hire the faculty we desperately need to provide the teaching and research."
It is not just a question of the federal government spending more money on post-secondary education, Catano insisted, but it could spend its money more wisely. As an example, he said the federal government will allocate nearly $425 million this year to the Canada Education Savings Grant, a program that does nothing to improve access to post-secondary education.
"For the same amount of money, we could immediately cut tuition fees by nearly 15 per cent across the board, or we could hire up to 3,000 full-time professors," Catano said.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers is the national voice of more than 32,000 academic staff and is dedicated to improving the quality of post-secondary education in Canada.
Source: http://www.caut.ca/english/publications/news_releases/20030218fedbudget.asp
Check it out!...
The CAUT Analysis of the 2003 Federal Budget is available on their website. http://www.caut.ca/english/issues/funding/budget2003.asp
INTEGRATED PROBLEMS:PARTICIPATORY ACTIONS
Paul Bidwell, Head of the Department of English
When I agreed to chair the English department, I didn't really know what I was getting into. I'd been in the department for 30 years, so I had a rough idea of what the Head does, but the view looks different from the chair. And it looks a lot different now than it did in 1995 when I took on the job.
My view is probably similar in many ways to that of some other heads; we all have the standard forms to fill out yearly for salary review, extension of probation, tenure, promotion, etc. We all have office staff to manage. We all have a few "high maintenance" faculty members. We are all expected to juggle administration, teaching and research. We all have to learn when to say "yes" and when to say "no" to the many requests to sit on committees, accept speaking engagements, attend workshops, etc. But, the English department is larger than five other colleges in terms of its faculty complement (both permanent and sessional - and we're becoming more dependent on sessionals), so that makes things a bit more complicated than in smaller units.
I love my job as department head. I enjoy having several balls in the air at one time, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of removing bureaucratic roadblocks from the paths of serious teachers and scholars. I'm blessed with a large number of talented and helpful colleagues who make my life easier.
In the past few years, however, things have become much more stressful, not just for me but also for many of my colleagues. The combination of new tenure and promotion standards, systematic program review and integrated planning - or "disintegrated planning" as I call it, because what it touches tends to disintegrate - all in one year - has left little time or energy for reading, writing, meeting with my Honours students, and, quite often, sleeping. I hesitate to complain to my superiors (Associate Dean, Dean, etc.) because they are even more stressed with the new demands placed on them. We all seem like gerbils (assistant gerbils, associate dean gerbils, full gerbils, etc.) on our exercise wheels, none of which are connected to the same axle. Just reading, let alone digesting, the various foundation documents, in their various manifestations, is quite a chore. No one sends paper anymore. I have to "download" more and more of my workload, and it gets heavier by the week.
Don't get me wrong. I'm committed to sensible planning; I believe in it. But I have three major concerns with our Integrated Planning process:
1. I'm concerned that the process now underway is designed to benefit those parts of the University that can demonstrate that they are "useful" in a practical way; the Humanities and Fine Arts will, I fear, be disadvantaged because the benefits of our teaching and research have for so long been taken for granted (like sunshine and clean water) that we are likely to be considered a lower priority for increased resources. In the Humanities, tri-council funding is an insufficient measure of research output; time is our currency.
2. The mandate of the University is being lost. Having had a hand in writing the Mission Statement, I understand the pride, sincerity and seriousness of its first sentence: "The University of Saskatchewan belongs to the people of Saskatchewan." I'm concerned that Synchotronic illumination (The Light Source) will wither undergraduate education, the core of our mandate.
3. I'm also concerned that the pace of planning has caused needless stress and divisiveness in the faculty. I'm seeing normally reasonable and thoughtful people getting very testy about having to make planning decisions with insufficient information. The irony is that we have a blizzard of documents and a paucity of clear information. I'm worried about our ability to attract good people to agree to chair departments in a climate such as is being created by IP, SPR, and other "initiatives." There is a revolving door in administration - 6 deans in seven years -- and all the "acting" positions are turning the U of S into a theatre. One very good prospect to chair English after my term is over has recently told me that he simply would not consider it after having seen the change in morale brought on by IP. We're planning "on steroids."
This is the most stressful year for me and for many of my colleagues in a decade. If nothing is done to alleviate the workload, I fear that we will see many more early retirements and reduced appointments and stress leaves than we can handle.
Thanks for listening.
Department Head Survey
Thank you to everyone that participated in our recent survey of Department Heads. The results of this survey will be conveyed in the near future.
FACULTY COMPLEMENT
Prepared by USFA Staff
At the USFA forum, Integrated Problems: Participatory Actions, information was presented on significant changes in faculty complement and workload.
The number of USFA members has changed dramatically. In 1980/81 the USFA had 963 members, reached a high of 1003 in 1990/91, and fell to a low of 865 in 2000/01, a 14% decrease. The number rose to 943 in 2001/02 not because of new hiring but because of members of the College of Medicine being brought in scope.
Interestingly, the number of half class equivalent classes (HCE) being taught by USFA members is decreasing. From 1977/78 to 2001/02 the number has fallen 11%. At the same time the number of HCE taught by non-members has risen 4% (down from the 15% increase between 1977/78 and 1998/99).
The number of HCE taught by non-members as a percentage of the total HCE taught by USFA members has climbed from 37% in 1977/78 to 43% in 2001/02.
Meantime, the number of half class equivalent students taught by USFA members is on the rise. Over four years (1997/98 to 2001/02) this number has increased 7%. Over the same period the number of HCE being taught by USFA members fell 5%.
These statistics show the drastic changes that have been occurring at the University. The USFA members are facing an ever-increasing workload, the number of USFA members has decreased, and non-members are replacing members.
(Note: the data used for the calculation of numbers referred to in this article came from two sources. 1. the Teaching Activity Analysis for 77/78, 97/98, 98/99, 00/01 and 01/02. 2. the report of all dues paying members of the USFA as of October of each academic year from 80/81 to 01/02. Half Class Equivalents (HCE) is a 3-credit course. Half Class Equivalent Students (HCES) is calculated by multiplying the credit weight of a course by the course enrolment and dividing by 3. The number of HCE taught by non-members as a percentage of the total HCE taught by association members is calculated by taking the number of HCE taught by non-members and dividing it by the number of HCE taught by association members.)
THE VIEW FROM A F.A.R.
By Professor Terry Matheson, Department of English
When it comes to Integrated Planning I can actually wax on a bit about this issue, since I've been giving--and getting--a lot of thought about the implications of SPR and Integrated Planning. What I've encountered is a mixture of anger, together with a lowering of morale (if such were possible).
Basically, what offends the colleagues to whom I have spoken, more than anything else, is that both Integrated Planning and the installation of systematic (i.e., regularly scheduled) program reviews is prompted by the assumption that we, as faculty, are intellectually slothful or otherwise substandard, and need to be monitored and directed from "above" by persons who alone have appropriate notions of what constitute acceptable levels of academic and pedagogical performance, if we are ever to keep from sinking even deeper into the slough of mediocrity. What is particularly irksome to many is that, from the outset, the process was defined in a way that made it extremely difficult to challenge, framed as it was under the rubric of "renewal", or creating a healthier intellectual climate throughout the university, without providing any substantive proof that such renewal was needed in the first place. As one colleague put it, it was virtually impossible to question the Provost's various plans without appearing to be against a healthy intellectual climate; that such criticism implied that one was in favour of lower standards.
One consequence of Integrated Planning that has caused great offence is the recognition that concentrating such money-allocating power in a small body of administrators cannot help but pit college against college, department against department, program against program. The magnitude of this change cannot be overestimated. Before Integrated Planning, academics at the university, while they may have had to compete for funds to maintain programs and hire new faculty, did so more or less openly. When funds for a position were taken from one department and assigned to another the reasons were usually self-evident, and publicly articulated. Though departments were disappointed from time to time, faculty still basically thought of themselves collegially, working together for a common purpose: the education of our students.
By putting the allocation of funding for every appointment at the pleasure of a committee consisting exclusively of administrators, and by requesting that all units petition that committee for funding for every vacant position (as many believe will become standard practice), a fundamental change has taken place, for we now cannot help but regard each other as being in an antagonistic, competitive relationship with our colleagues in other disciplines as a matter of course, where we will have to fight, essentially, for any position in an uncertain atmosphere where nothing is guaranteed. Although this aspect of Integrated Planning has only been touched on in passing, it is obvious that those who hope to be in control see themselves as the final arbiters when it comes to determining which departments and colleges will receive funding. Ironically, though they may embrace this responsibility from the best of intentions, as time goes on, they may well find themselves forced, willy-nilly, to direct funds in a manner that will increase the profile of the University (presumably to increase its standing in the Maclean's ranking), rather than buttress, or even maintain, important and intellectually viable, but low-profile disciplines that draw little attention to themselves.
For proof that the above has already occurred, one need look no further than the directive given department chairs as to how they could best secure the money that came to the University as a result of the DesRosiers report. Chairs were informed that requests for money to replenish or shore up existing programs would not be entertained: only "novel" and "innovative" projects would receive consideration. The implications of this directive are truly disconcerting, for implicit herein is the assumption that traditional disciplines are somehow of less importance than new, high profile initiatives (whatever that means).
I have touched only briefly on the concerns that have been expressed to me most frequently. Of course there are others. Some have wondered if there is any plan or procedure in place to monitor the integrated planners, in terms of evaluating the decisions they will be making, or determining the effect their decisions will have on traditional disciplines, etc. But fundamental to all the concerns is a recognition of the devaluation of faculty; that our role in the academic planning of this institution is being seriously undermined, and that we are being relegated to a peripheral position, where we are becoming not merely marginal, but also irrelevant, where the decision-making process is concerned.
Other Sources...
CAUT Bulletin January 2003 http://www.caut.ca/english/bulletin/2003_jan/commentary.asp [NOTE: the original title of this article was "University of Saskatchewan: A Case Study in Hierarchical Management"]
Canada's Innovation Agenda: CAUT's Response http://www.caut.ca/english/issues/commercialization/innovationagenda.asp
CAUT's Statement to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance
Regarding the 2003 Federal Budget http://www.caut.ca/english/publications/briefs/default.asp
The AUCC's views on the federal government's proposed innovation strategy. http://www.aucc.ca/innovation/index_e.html