Spring General Meeting

Today’s post is just a quick reminder that the FAUW Spring General Meeting is tomorrow at 11am in MC 4059. Topics on the agenda include a report from the president, treasurer, FAUW committees, our OCUFA Director, as well as the approval of our 2012 audited financial statements and 2013 budget, and an opportunity for members to raise issues and concerns. The full information package was distributed to our signed-up members. To sign up, fill out this quick form. We look forward to seeing you there!

Also, the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee workshops begin tomorrow, and there’s room for a few people to drop in.

Applying for promotion to full professor
Tuesday, April 9, 9:00 to 10:30 am – MC 4059

Faculty recently hired to their first probationary term
Tuesday, April 9, 2:00 to 4:00 pm – MC 4059

Faculty applying for probationary contract renewal in 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 9:00 to 11:00 am – QNC 1502

Faculty applying for tenure in 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 12:00 to 2:00 pm – QNC 1502

The Dubai Campus Re-Re-Visited and Memorandum of Agreement Changes

David Porreca, FAUW President

This week’s post provides a two-for-one deal: First, a response to Peter Douglas’ letter appended to the bottom of the previous posting entitled “The Dubai Campus and Transparency”; and second, a brief announcement about upcoming faculty-wide votes relating to changes to the Memorandum of Agreement.

The Dubai Campus Re-Re-Visited

In his letter addressed to the FAUW Board, dated to 10 February 2013, and added in the comments of the “The Dubai Campus and Transparency,” Peter Douglas, Director of UW’s Dubai campus, responds to one of the bullet points relating to the Dubai campus that had been included in our post about the resignation of the Vice President Academic and Provost. In this letter, he expresses his disapproval of FAUW’s position on the Dubai campus in no uncertain terms.

Here, I would like to respond by reiterating some of the main concerns that the Faculty Association has had with UW’s operations in Dubai from the beginning.

Firstly, by the very nature of the legal environment in the United Arab Emirates, there is no way that anyone could claim that all UW policies and procedures could be applied equally on our main campus in Waterloo as well as to the Dubai campus. In particular, the provisions we have that protect the rights of our LGBTQ community – students, staff and faculty – do not and cannot apply in the UAE. Being openly gay is a serious crime there, punishable with jail time and, for foreigners, deportation following jail time. Also, having sexual relations with anyone but one’s spouse (marriage is an essential component) is a similarly punishable offense.

Consequently, and by definition, the opportunities offered by the Dubai campus, in terms both of teaching and of learning, have not been open to the entire UW community of participating departments. It is therefore not a campus where principles of equity as we understand them here could be properly enforced, and hence FAUW’s opposition to its opening years ago, and also hence our gratitude at its closure.

The other main concern that the Faculty Association has had relates to the transparency of the operations in Dubai. These have been expressed in the previous posting and need not be reiterated here. If long-term financial planning had been shared openly with the UW community from the beginning, perhaps a more charitable eye may have been turned upon the several money-losing years of the operations in Dubai. As things stand, however, UW has spent seven figures learning an expensive lesson. What could UW have done otherwise with that money?

Finally, the word “debacle” has never appeared anywhere on the FAUW blog and is a mis-characterization of the postings that have appeared.

MoA Changes

There are two main changes to the Memorandum of Agreement that are currently in the works, and that UW faculty members will be called to vote upon before the end of April.

Article 12.10: A paragraph will be added to the MoA allowing housekeeping changes to the MoA that both UW Administration and the FAUW Board agree upon to be enacted without re-opening the entire agreement. This is strictly a provision that will allow wording clarifications and small changes without going to a full formal vote each time. This has been common practice, but has never been accepted formally as a procedure. The full wording of the article clarifies that nothing to do with compensation can be affected by any changes enacted under the new 12.10.
b. Article 14: A new framework for Integrity in Scholarly Research is being issued by the Tri-Agencies and is to be adopted by all institutions that receive Tri-Agency funding. A full description of the framework can be found here: http://www.rcr.ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique/framework-cadre/. Each institution must develop its own policies and procedures that abide by the regulations outlined by the Tri-Agencies. The changes implied by this new framework enable the formalization and systematization of certain disciplinary procedures relating to academic integrity that will, I believe, improve both the transparency and the muscle of UW’s regulations on this front. Of main concern to FAUW is that adequate provisions be included to prevent the misuse of these new rules (e.g., we don’t want to enable ‘witch-hunts’: frivolous accusations must be discouraged as much as possible, and any allegations that turn out to be false must be handled in a way as to minimize or eliminate negative repercussions on the accused).

So, stay tuned and, if you are a member of the Faculty Association, expect to be called upon to vote on these matters within a few weeks. Any faculty members who are not Faculty Association members should join formally so as to have a voice in these important upcoming changes.

A Quick Note On Scheduling

David Porreca, FAUW President

This post is intended to bring our membership up to speed on the latest developments regarding the new scheduling software being tested by the Registrar’s Office. The discussion below is based upon a presentation and Q&A session held with Ken Lavigne at the most recent Faculty Relations Committee meeting on 14 March.

Positive Developments

a) “Pavilions”

The new scheduling software, known as “InfoSilem”, has the capability to have groups of buildings (i.e., “pavilions”) assigned to a specific academic unit such that that unit’s classes will only be held in those buildings. In other words, for example, the English Department might choose “Hagey Hall, Arts Lecture Hall, Modern Languages, and PAS” as their ‘pavilion’, and therefore never again have to run to RCH or Optometry to teach a class.

b) Implementation

The new scheduling system will not be “going live” at least until the Spring of 2014, since results from further testing of both Fall and Winter terms are needed to optimize the new system. In effect, the Registrar’s Office has been proceeding as if it were following FAUW’s call from a number of months ago that the new system not be implemented unless and until it be recognized as “better” than the system we have in place. Although FAUW’s role is to look after the interests of faculty members, we understood “better” to apply to all stakeholders (including, e.g., students, grad studies, scheduling officers etc.). If the testing from Fall and Winter prove to be sub-optimal, the Registrar has agreed that the implementation will be delayed further.

c) Improvements so Far

In the current iteration of testing, any scheduling restrictions expressed by faculty members have been inputted as if they were the most strict and rigid (“type 1”, according to InfoSilem’s ranking system, corresponding roughly to “medically necessary non-teaching time”; 2 other less restrictive layers are to be tested in later increments). Despite this additional restrictiveness, the system produced schedules for those departments that participated in the testing so far that guaranteed at least two non-teaching days for 92% of the professorate, up from 87% in earlier tests. In other words, we can expect further improvement on this front when the real-world, less-restrictive constraints are applied.

Needs Improvement

a) Constraints vs. Preferences

Offering faculty members the opportunity to block off time in their schedule when they would rather not teach is how the tests have been proceeding so far. Better yet would be a way of optimizing each professor’s schedule such that their individual schedules reflect the times when they want to teach. Pedagogically, the latter is by far preferable, since UW students deserve to interact with their professors when they’re at their best.

It should be noted as well that the decisions regarding the levels of constraint mentioned earlier will be handled at the departmental level, just as it always has been, with no centralized awareness of the often confidential reasons for preferring some times over others.

b) Participation

If the tests are to accomplish their intended goals, all departments must participate, otherwise the tests will be skewed. Only ~70% of departments have participated in the simulations so far, with only ~1/2 of graduate programs included. For this Fall term, FAUW is pushing for each individual professor to receive a copy of their hypothetical “InfoSilem” schedule to compare to the real one they got under the current system.

c) Disparities across campus

The testing of the InfoSilem software is revealing significant disparities between academic units on campus in terms of how scheduling is handled at the moment. Some units already ask for each individual’s preferred teaching times, which they tend to obtain for the most part, while elsewhere, faculty members have never, ever been asked such a question and have always accepted whatever schedule they’ve ended up with. In other words, the change in practice with InfoSilem will affect the working lives of some more than others. FAUW will be monitoring this situation closely, and we welcome feedback on how the testing of this system is experienced subjectively by you, our members.

Upcoming Events

There’s much afoot in the Faculty Association, and we want to do our best to keep you informed. Over the next month there are a number of key meetings and workshops happening, Head past the jump to find out more about the Council of Representatives meeting, the Spring General Meeting, and the Academic Freedom & Tenure Committee’s promotion workshops.

Council of Representatives

The Council of Representatives is designed to ensure clear communication between the FAUW board and our members. Traditionally meeting twice annually, the council discusses issues that come from the department level, and checks on how FAUW is addressing the concerns of the members directly.

The next meeting is on Wednesday, March 20th, so make sure to let your representative know about some of the challenges you’re facing here at UW.

Spring General Meeting

Our Spring General Meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 9th from 11am-1pm in MC 4059. The Faculty Associations financial statements will be presented, and each of our committees will report on how they’ve been carrying out their mandate since the Fall. There’ll be a report from David Porreca, the president, and plenty of opportunity to ask questions and get feedback on issues.

Academic Freedom & Tenure Workshops

Peter van Beek, chair of the Academic Freedom & Tenure Committee, will be offering the following workshops around the Spring General Meeting.

For Tenure-track Faculty

The probationary contract period and applying for tenure can be intimidating! The biggest risks you face are those stemming from uncertainty on your part about the expectations of your peers and of university policy. These workshops are designed to provide critical information on how to succeed and to ensure you know where and how to get your questions answered. The workshops complement the Documenting Your Teaching for Tenure & Promotion workshop presented by the Centre for Teaching Excellence.

Faculty recently hired to their first probationary term
Tuesday, April 9, 2:00 to 4:00 pm – MC 4059

Faculty applying for probationary contract renewal in 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 9:00 to 11:00 am – QNC 1502

Faculty applying for tenure in 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 12:00 to 2:00 pm – QNC 1502

For Tenured Faculty

Applying for promotion to full professor
Tuesday, April 9, 9:00 to 10:30 am – MC 4059

Tenured faculty who are considering applying for promotion in 2013 or the near future should attend this workshop for advice on Policy 77 and clarification of what is expected from peers and from the university in the promotion process. This workshop will walk you through the process step by step and will provide explanations of formal policy as well as practical tips to help you succeed.

Approved Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor (ADDS) Status: An Obstacle or An Impediment?

David Porreca, FAUW President

Over the past few months, concerns about the impact of the university’s regulations surrounding ADDS status (known as the LIARS list in Engineering) have come to the Faculty Association’s attention. Below the fold, you will find 1) a summary of the principal concerns surrounding this issue 2) what has been done about it so far, and 3) an open letter from a colleague wanting to share his strong concerns about this issue.

The Problem(s)

ADDS status is what a faculty member achieves when they are granted the privilege of supervising a PhD student solo, i.e., without a more senior co-supervisor.

Concerns surrounding the way ADDS status is handled at UW are numerous:

1) The “regulations” relating to ADDS status are not part of any official university policy, guideline or procedure. It has not appeared on any faculty member’s official employment contract or offer letter, as far as the Faculty Association is aware.

2) Their official home appears to be on the Graduate Studies Office webpage, and the specific implementation is left up to each of the individual faculties. As of this writing, only two of the six faculties (AHS and Environment) had their version of the ADDS status regulations posted online in an easy-to-find location. The Faculty of Environment has two different versions posted in two different spots.

3) Junior faculty members have not been adequately informed about the requirement for co-supervision until their first opportunity to supervise a PhD student arose.

4) In certain disciplines, especially those that fall under the umbrella of NSERC funding, faculty members applying for funding without having had the responsibility of the sole supervision of a PhD student find themselves at a disadvantage in the application rankings.

5) The intent of this regulation is not clearly articulated anywhere.

6) There are no checks and balances to ensure that junior faculty who are forced to co-supervise receive a fair treatment from their senior colleagues.

7) There is a large variability across departments, even within a Faculty, with regards to the criteria junior faculty must satisfy before they are granted ADDS status.

A number of other problems are raised in the open letter appended below.

What Is Being Done

The Faculty Association has brought forward the concerns raised by several faculty members around this issue to the Faculty Relations Committee.

Some fact finding has revealed that UW is exceptional among the U15 universities in imposing co-supervision on junior faculty members. Each institution has its own set of regulations governing the capacity to supervise PhD students – often involving faculty members qualifying to join a Faculty of Graduate Studies, which UW doesn’t have – but none other than UW require junior faculty members to solicit co-supervision services from senior colleagues.

Consultation is underway with various stakeholders (e.g., GSO, Graduate Student Association) to determine the precise intent of the regulation as it stands, and how that aim can be achieved without imposing co-supervisory status upon junior colleagues.

Your feedback

Have you been adversely affected by the University’s current practice surrounding ADDS? Do you have any feedback that would help the Faculty Association to argue the case on behalf of our junior colleagues? Please post your comments in the “Comments” section below. If you wish for only FAUW to see your comments, please send them to the FAUW president, David Porreca.

Here is how one of our colleagues feels about ADDS status (courtesy of Bryan Tolson, Civil Engineering):

An Open Letter to the UW Community: Concerns With the ADDS Regulation

Dr. Bryan Tolson

I am an ADDS (Approved Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor) faculty member at the University of Waterloo. I can solely supervise PhD students. However, I haven’t always had this right, because the ADDS regulation prohibits new faculty members from acting as sole supervisors.

Before reading further, please take about 5 minutes and examine the ADDS regulation at the official GSO link: https://uwaterloo.ca/graduate-studies/about-graduate-studies/organization-graduate-studies#6. Please note that as of March 10, 2013, the regulation as it reads online is not the most recent version approved by Senate in June, 2010. I’m not sure where to tell you to find the ‘real’ regulation in practice today at UW. Neither does Google: I encourage you to perform a search of the UW website for “Approved Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor”.

Now that you’ve read the regulation as it appears online, let me give some background. The ADDS regulation was initially created in 1968, 11 years after UW started offering graduate degrees. At that time, Graduate Studies wanted to address a common problem: that many faculty at UW were pulled from industry with a Master’s as their terminal degree. The intentions were reasonable: a faculty member without a PhD supervising PhD students can lead to a host of problems. It was argued (correctly in 1968) that the ADDS regulation was needed to uphold the reputation of our graduate program. However, it is now 2013 and conditions are different at UW. The existence of the ADDS regulation today actually hurts our reputation for Graduate Studies – it suggests we hire new faculty who are implicitly incompetent at supervision of advanced research (even for topics directly related to their own PhD research).

We don’t require new faculty to co-teach their first course, so why do we require new faculty to co-supervise PhD students? Another question to ponder: How do we attract the best and brightest new faculty to Waterloo with this regulation, which does not have a counterpart at most other Canadian universities? Until now, UW quite honestly has often misled them, unintentionally of course, by not telling them about the ADDS regulation before they sign their contract.

I could not find reference to the ADDS regulation in any of the following sources:

Employment contract for new faculty members (to my knowledge)
UW Policy documents (Class F pertaining to faculty only)
The Memorandum of Agreement between the Faculty Association and the Administration
An 18 page document produced by Graduate Studies called “A Guide for Graduate Research and Supervision at the University of Waterloo. 2011”
Watport website entitled “UW New Faculty Survival Guide”

In the last few weeks UW administrators and the Faculty Association have begun discussing how to address a few of the problems associated with the ADDS regulations and that is a good thing. I am however concerned that most administrators and the UW Community in general are not aware of all the problems and arguments against the ADDS regulation. Hence, one goal of this letter is to put this issue on everyone’s radar so that all the problems associated with this regulation will come to light. It seems potential changes to the ADDS regulations and the way it is implemented have also been discussed. Given that solutions to the issue appear to be surfacing, another goal of this letter is to ask that administrators put another option on the table and give it real consideration – the abolishment of the ADDS regulation. Ask yourself, “Why not?” In my opinion, abolishment seems to be the only real option considering the following summary of key regulation issues:

After arriving at UW, new faculty are blindsided by a restriction on their Academic Freedom by a regulation that is inaccessible, can be administered based on unwritten rules at the Faculty level, is not currently the norm in Canada, and is known to reduce Tri-council grant amounts for UW professors.

Each of these statements can be backed up by facts and testimonials.

UW needs a clean slate in order to truly address, to all stakeholder satisfaction, the issues surrounding PhD supervision in 2013. The norm at the University of Waterloo should be that new Assistant Professors that are tenure-track and hold a PhD are allowed to solely supervise a PhD student. While it is important for the university to promote faculty success at graduate supervision, as well as protect graduate students, the ADDS regulation is not the correct mechanism for doing so.

So now I ask something of you all to keep this discussion moving forward:

FAUW Board Members: this blog is a great start but also consider advocating for ADDS abolishment.
Assistant Professors: if you agree with my position, post your comments in the “Comments” section below and note if you, like so many others, were misled by UW.
ADDS and LIARS card-holding members, chairs and Deans: ask an Assistant Professor in your department/faculty what they really think of ADDS (LIARS is the Engineering equivalent).
PhD students at UW and the Graduate Student Association: as you render judgment on my position, think about two things. First, put on your Assistant Professor hat for a second (some of you will join us in a few years) and think hard if ADDS is a regulation you would like to be subject to as you start your academic career. Second, remember that there are superior alternatives to ADDS that can meet the needs of graduate students and new faculty. A good start might be a FUSS (Faculty Unfit to Supervise Students) list, which can provide a mechanism for protecting graduate students, both Master’s and PhD, from faculty from those with a track record of poor supervision without unduly constraining new faculty.
Senate members: if your vote is needed on the ADDS issue, please base your decision on demonstrable facts and testimonials. Task forces can be initiated to deal with any concerns arising from ADDS abolishment (for example, Graduate student protection and new faculty supervisory mentoring mechanisms).
To our President: see the above request to Senate. Please tell the UW community what you think about the issue. Please also see that UW form task forces to address issues surrounding PhD supervision that are relevant in 2013. If the ADDS regulation disappears, I will be the first to volunteer for one of these task forces.

Patchwork fixes to the current ADDS regulation will not serve new faculty or UW in general. In my opinion, ADDS has got to go.

Sincerely,

B
ryan Tolson & Contributors

The Hagey Lecture Perspective: 1982

The Hagey lectures are the University of Waterloo’s premier invitational public lecture series. Since 1970, outstanding individuals, who have distinguished themselves internationally in some area of scholarly or creative endeavour have given talks intended to challenge, stimulate and enrich not only the faculty, staff and students of the University of Waterloo, but all members of this community.

These annual lectures are co-sponsored by the Faculty Association and the university, and with the success of this year’s lecture by Dr. Paul Collier, we’d like to take the opportunity to celebrate some of our past lectures.

In 1982, Margaret Atwood became the first female lecturer in the Hagey lecture series, joining pre-eminent scientists, politicians, and Nobel laureates. Already an award-winning author at the time, her accolades included the winning the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry (for the Circle Game in 1966) and the E. J. Pratt medal, as well as serving as the University of Toronto’s Writer in Residence. The year before, in 1981, she was celebrated by Chatelaine as their woman of the year. To have such a prestigious Canadian author so near to Waterloo was too great an opportunity to pass up.

During her visit, she held a seminar on the writer and her craft, lecturing to the English Language and Literature department, as well as students in the Writer’s Workshop on campus. Her second seminar, held with Women’s Studies, Drama, History and Fine arts, focused on the writer as a cultural agent, and the impact writers can have on the larger community. Her lecture, “On Writing the Male Character,” remains one of the best Hagey lectures on writing in the series’ 40 year history.

Since her lecture here, Margaret Atwood ascended from being an eminent writer to being one of the most read and celebrated authors in Canada, receiving another Governor-General’s award and most recently the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal. Her contribution to literature is recognized across the globe, and it was both an honour and a privilege to have her at Waterloo.

The Dubai Campus and Transparency

David Porreca, FAUW President

This blog follows up on correspondence received by FAUW’s Board of Directors regarding a bullet point in the 29 January blog posting entitled “To Provost or Not to Provost,” that related to the closure of UW’s Dubai campus.

Thanks to discussions undertaken with interested parties, I can clarify what I have identified as the key unifying concern relating to UW’s involvement in the Dubai satellite campus.

In essence, at the time of its opening, the Dubai campus was presented to the campus community generally, and to the bodies of collegial governance in particular, as a fait accompli, with little possibility for any feedback to have any material impact on whether UW should get involved. Moreover, the satellite campus was presented without a publically released, clear business plan that could be used to weigh properly the potential benefits and opportunity costs of getting involved in such an enterprise.

In other words, there was a drastic lack of transparencythat shrouded the initial opening of the Dubai campus from the critical scrutiny that may (or may not) have revealed the concerns that eventually led to its closure.

Speaking of which, the closure of the Dubai campus came as a surprise to many, even though some cheered for understandable reasons – ones I raised in the aforementioned bullet point from the earlier blog post. As of May 2012, UW’s President was announcing publicly that “it’s not a question of whether Dubai is sinking, but how fast it can swim!” Not six months later, it was closed. Rationales for the closure were made public, but apparently without consultation with all of the immediately concerned parties, nor with the broader campus community whose operations will be affected substantially. Again, a lack of transparencyreigned over the decision-making that led to the closure, leading to negative consequences for several interested parties.

The University of Waterloo must be willing to stand by its commitment to transparency in deed, not just in word. Consequently, proper consultation must happen in the future to ensure that large-scale initiatives (e.g., satellite campuses in overseas locations) that have a significant impact on the university’s operations will not be undertaken without all stakeholders providing public agreement to a publicly released plan.

The Limits of Academic Freedom

Peter van Beek, Chair, FAUW Academic Freedom & Tenure Committee

Should a psychologist who is a “scientific” racist be defended? What about a historian who is a holocaust denier? A biologist who is an advocate of intelligent design? A physicist who denies anthropogenic climate change? An engineering professor who fiercely challenges the university administration when they propose to open a satellite campus in a country with a questionable human rights record? And finally, what about an ethnic studies professor who, days after the 9/11 attacks, characterizes those who died in the World Trade Center as “little Eichmanns”? Should that faculty member’s right to speak and write be defended?

In other words, what are the limits to academic freedom? That was the topic of a conference organized by the Harry Crowe Foundation that David Porreca, George Freeman, and I attended in Toronto recently on a cold January weekend. Below are some of the highlights that I took away from the conference. However, let me first put forward a disclaimer: Although I have been a faculty member for almost twenty-five years and I chair the Academic Freedom & Tenure Committee, to my major discredit I came to the conference pretty much a blank slate on this topic. My learning curve was steep.

In what follows, the CAUT is the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the “national voice for academic staff”, and the AUCC is the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, a “unified voice” for university presidents. As may be surmised from their descriptions, the two associations sometimes have fundamentally different points of view on topics, academic freedom being one of those.

The CAUT has an elegant one-page policy statement on academic freedom. Our Memorandum of Agreement, which governs the conditions of employment for faculty members, has a statement on academic freedom that is quite closely based on the CAUT policy statement. To oversimplify, academic freedom has four main components: freedom in research and publication, freedom to teach and discuss, freedom of extramural expression (the freedom to critique society and the government), and freedom of intramural expression (the freedom to criticize the university and the university administration).

The AUCC recently adopted a less elegant policy statement on academic freedom that received much criticism at the conference. Quite shamefully, in my view, the AUCC statement omits both freedom of extramural and intramural expression. Some of the most controversial conflicts over academic freedom in the past have revolved around extramural and intramural expression. Bertrand Russell was dismissed in 1916 by Trinity College, Cambridge, for his public criticism of the government. Harry Crowe was a professor of History at United College (now the University of Winnipeg) who was dismissed from his academic post in 1958 because of his criticism of organized religion and the university administration. And lest one think that these conflicts are of the past, Ignacio Chapela was denied tenure by the University of California at Berkeley in 2003 (ultimately granted in 2005), perhaps due to his intense criticism of adeal between Berkeley and Novartis, a Swiss biotech firm. The university collected a total of eighteen letters from external evaluators! My understanding is that collection was continued until a negative letter was finally received.

The AUCC statement also emphasizes institutional autonomy and institutional academic freedom, as opposed to academic freedom being a right of an individual faculty member. It also emphasizes the role of professional norms in academic freedom (i.e., academic freedom more narrowly defined as belonging in one’s area of expertise and where the discipline sets the standard of inquiry). While professional norms might be a way of shutting up those anthropogenic climate change deniers that I find so annoying, professional norms can also be used to snuff out dissent. Academia is replete with orthodoxy and fundamentalism, and those who own the podium are often reluctant to share the power or to allow critical voices. Several panelists at the conference referred to an excellent speech by Harry Arthurs on why it does not make sense only to allow professors to speak on their “areas of expertise”. Interestingly, not all university presidents support the AUCC policy. David Naylor, the President of the University of Toronto, released a public statement distancing himself from the AUCC policy and (although correlation is not causation) subsequently resigned from the AUCC Executive. Patrick Deane, President of McMaster University, also clearly distanced himself (me judice) from the policy during his presentation at a panel during the conference.

Much more could be said, as there were panels on academic freedom (AF) and professional norms, AF and institutional autonomy, AF and religious belief, AF and equity, AF and the law, and AF and the growth of university-industry collaborations. But I am wary of going on too long, so let me leave further discussion as a possibility for the future.

MOOCs: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

David Porreca, FAUW President

Last week’s FAUW Board meeting was dominated by a discussion of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses.

MOOCs: They’ve become too big to ignore, and have drawn in the likes of Harvard, MIT and Stanford. They have also become the darling idea of the “faculty productivity”-obsessed, and the bane of those who value the dynamic interplay between research and teaching that defines what we do as regular faculty members.

To what extent should Waterloo get involved in this new method of content delivery – recently approved for academic credit by Antioch University in Los Angeles? How can we go about pulling some value from the MOOC bog?

The Good: “It’s Free!”

The lack of a “paywall” for admission or registration has enabled registration numbers in existing MOOCs to run from the low thousands to over 100,000. Free online mini-courses could provide, at a once-only, up-front cost, a potent means of “branding” our university. If the production values are truly professional – reports from existing MOOCs hint at the opposite – what better way to showcase the best of what we do at UW to attract clever young people to our university? They could serve an analogous function to the mini-lectures that are offered to prospective students during the March Break Open House days across campus.

The Bad, Part 1: “It’s Free!”

The moral commitment to an education that comes with some kind of fee – however nominal – raises the level of the student’s commitment to their studies. Free MOOCs have demonstrated this principle in action, with completion rates in the single-digit percentages.

The Bad, Part 2: “It’s Massive!”

Coming Soon: World of Coursecraft

The enormous numbers of registrants in MOOCs have been known to overwhelm the servers on which the courses are supposed to run, as well as overwhelming the generally under-paid and over-worked contract academic staff who coordinate the courses. Clearly, the necessary infrastructure – hardware, software and properly qualified human personnel – are each equally essential to the success of any effort toward making a MOOC successful.

Moreover, the mode of delivery turns active, interactive learning into passive “info-tainment” that precludes “deep learning.” Indeed, those who enroll in a MOOC interact mostly with their peers, including the marking of quizzes. MOOCs might appeal to those concerned exclusively with raw enrollment numbers, but their scale largely precludes the sort of critical analysis that happens best through face-to-face interactions. The granting of academic credit for MOOCs represents a hazardous devaluation of what we do as academics by missing utterly the activities that we do that add the most value to an education.

The Ugly: It’s for Profit!

Two of the three main enterprises that have been responsible for the recent explosion of MOOCs are for-profit companies. They are inserting themselves as intermediaries in the workings of academic life in the crucial interstices between instructors and students. In an analogous way, Access Copyright has attempted to squeeze profit from necessary academic interactions in a way that hinders the delivery of higher education by increasing the cost to the participants. In the case of MOOCs, the cost comes primarily in the form of the resources sunk into the preparation of courses that fail to accomplish what on-campus, in-the-flesh classes do.

Although the courses themselves remain free, the MOOC-sponsoring organizations do not have a clear business model. They are all, however, functioning with the backing of substantial venture capital that will expect some return on their investment at some point down the line. So far, they have been looking into providing services to employers who are looking for contact information of the best students enrolled in the MOOCs, a sort of credentialized headhunting service. In addition, one can easily imagine how advertising could become an important revenue stream considering the numbers of participants involved. Either way, the insertion of for-profit middlemen between instructors and students is a pernicious development that flies in the face of higher education as a public good.

Conclusion

The University of Waterloo would be unwise to ignore the MOOC movement entirely – the state of development of these courses has been likened to the state of the desktop computer market in 1981 – so we should remain involved at least to the extent that it will enable us to seize upon any unexpected positive developments that may arise.

Yet the style of interaction between faculty and students in such courses does not correspond to anything any of us would recognize as good pedagogy. The use of MOOCs should therefore be limited to free promotional materials. If they are done well, they will be elegant showcases of useful content that highlight the best of what we can do at Waterloo. The Faculty Association will oppose any attempt to accept academic credit for MOOCs, as doing so will risk incalculable consequences on our capacity as faculty members to deliver on our teaching responsibilities.

Academia in the Age of Austerity

Part 2 – The view from other situations

Read Part 1

I return you to the scene: 120 conference attendees, absorbing a talk on the decline of the university as a centre of critical thought and human development, while using a spoon to chip away at a perfect sphere of hyper-frozen desert effectively unsupported on a flat plate without (a) making too much noise; or (b) launching the sphere across the table at a colleague.

After lunch, more discussion on the austerity excuse to rewrite Ontario labour legislation brought home the scary point that the government might adapt its strategy based on lessons learned through the zero-zero ‘consultations’and the various fights with big unions such as the ones representing teachers (in my mind, I think of the Borg response to phaser fire in Star Trek). The most extreme case would be US-style ‘right-to-[be-exploited-in-your]-work’ legislation to cripple all collective bargaining. Many of our neighbouring states have it already.

Britt Hall –
National Education Association,
Director for Wisconsin

When warned by Wisconsinites in May 2011 at CAUT Council, that we had one to three years to avoid taking their path, I’m sure many thought such things would be unthinkable in Ontario. At that time, we were told that the hard-right-wing message is well scripted and revolves around a simplistic “power back to the people” message of (a) eliminating collective bargaining; (b) removing Rand formulae; and (c) requiring constant recertification. It is a strategy of divorcing both the public and association members from association leadership. The moral of the story, as told to us, was to learn to fight now, not after it starts, and to use every means to get and stay connected with our members. A look back at the polling data mentioned in my previous post will convince you of how easily such legislation could slide past the Ontario public.

Maybe this is a good time to point out that if FAUW manages to get you, just once, 0.5% more scale increase than the university/government wanted to pay you, your dues are pretty much covered for the rest of your career.

A session on student perspectives was very enlightening. We could learn a lot about organizing political dissent from the Quebec student example. They seem to have made masterful use of decentralized support building and clear messages attuned to the general public’s sympathies. What got lost somewhat in Ontario news reporting was that the protest was not all that much about money, but rather the forced effective change of higher education from a social good to an individually consumed service. The metamorphosis in Ontario has been more gradual and is already much farther along, so the Quebec uprising didn’t gain much traction here.

However, students told us they are very worried about tuition levels which result in too much debt and as many as half of all students are working too many hours at outside jobs during school terms. They argued that tuition should be zero but I think this ignores some perverse incentives and moral hazards that might enter the picture with that much imbalance between the government and individual investment. Still, if a university (or college) education is increasingly the franchise for adult life, then it clearly is a social good and saddling the student with an undue fraction of its cost can be viewed as a ‘youth tax.’ Tuition may yet become the galvanizing issue for dissent even in Ontario.

The last half day of this conference focused on international perspectives. England is always a bracing example. Recently, government there cut teaching support to universities by 80% (yes, that says eighty percent) and allowed massive increases in tuition, implementing a near instantaneous ideological shift. They expect an average student to accumulate about $70k (Canadian) in debt and take 20 to 30 years to repay it – essentially education via a mortgage. One effect this year has been a sharp drop in enrollment. Whether a student carrying that much debt might go on to graduate studies remains to be seen and was not part of the consideration by government. England is also way, way down the metrification path and, curiously, universities themselves appear far more interested in rankings than do funding agencies, students, or government. Perhaps the next time rankings are justified in Senate, we should ask for verifiable proof that these things matter to anyone but us?

From the US perspective (courtesy of Jeffrey Williams,Carnegie Mellon), we heard about what was called a deliberate policy shift over the last few decades. Students have been reconfigured as objects of private profit (customers). Faculty have been reconfigured as minority players – only one quarter or less are permanent employees. Administration has grown and become corporatized. Buildings and grounds exist largely for self-accumulation with enticing things like luxury dorms and fitness centres. Two-thirds of students accumulate on the order of $30k of education-related debt by graduation, essentially a form of indenture. Universities play a role in class sorting and the class divisions which plague the country.

According to panelist Eleanor MacDonald (Queen’s), much of the cutting in Ontario since 1990 was absorbed not just in tuition hikes but in quality degradation and workload increases in universities. We require less of students in the form of fewer assignments with less participation and less critical t
hinking, if only due to the sheer number of students in each class. In addition to this, the corporatization and branding activities in universities are leading to subtle and not-so-subtle disavowal pressures to not talk about the deterioration. We all are meant to be promoters and marketers of our individual units and schools. She believes we should get involved in the democratic processes and start to talk more openly. Since this is precisely what FAUW tries to do, I couldn’t agree more.

George Freeman