Over the past decades, three divides have emerged at post-secondary institutions:
- growing animosity between teaching and research
- the growth of instructional faculty
- the growth of sessional faculty
These result from decreased post-secondary funding.
As you read the following, know that all administrative positions are filled by research faculty. Where might their priorities lie?
- With reduced funding, university administration has fewer dollars to allocate to teaching and research. Research faculty value and regularly teach 300 and 400-level courses. The students in these courses have committed to getting a degree in that discipline. Research faculty teaching these courses have the flexibility to bring their research into the courses and can recruit those students to work in their research labs.
100 and many 200-level courses are “service” courses. They function as the electives for students in other disciplines. From math to science to english, over 95 % of the students in 100-level courses are taking that course as an elective. Many research faculty see 100-level courses as a waste of valuable funding — funding that could go to senior courses and research.
Former UAlberta President Indira Samarasekera institutionalized the siphoning of money from undergraduate instruction to establish a bloated research program. Research faculty continue to demand the University maintain this bloated research program at the expense of all other institutional functions. (Recall that university administrators — the decision makers — are research faculty.)
It is well established in the literature that the first-year program sets a learner’s perception of the institution. If a learner doesn’t feel valued in first-year, their impression of the institution and their degree will be reduced.
From a societal perspective, if a person’s last experience with a subject is negative, they will despise that subject their entire life. We see this in society today. Many of the politicians, business owners, and non-science majors were required to take science in high school and university. If that science course left a negative impression on them, they do not see the value of science in society. This is actively occurring, with a growing anti-science movement. Conversely, if their last science course illustrates the applications and importance of science in society, the student may not do well in the science, but they will understand its importance. This is exactly how I taught: teach the science and focusing on the applications of science in society. 55 % of my students got C grades and below. My evaluations still averaged 4.8/5.0.
. - Research faculty have light teaching loads, often as few as two courses per year. This is to give them time to focus on their research. Research faculty also prefer to teach 300, 400, and graduate courses.
In the 1990s, universities started hiring people to teach lower-level courses. These instructors taught up to ten courses per year, did not have research responsibilities, and were paid less than research faculty. This was seen as an undesirable but necessary measure to cut costs, which left in more money for research.
Depending on the institution, full-time instructional faculty are paid between 60 and 90 % that of full-time research faculty, but they teach up to five times more courses.
. - This gets a bit complicated. Initially, all instructors were sessional. Instructors were seen as a stop-gap until funding was restored. Instructors were paid on a per course basis, without benefits (health, pension, etc.). Funding was never restored, and institutions relied more and more on sessional instructors. In some departments, retiring research faculty were replaced with sessional instructors. It became common for sessional instructors to teach full course loads.
Sessional faculty saw they were being taken advantage of, so they fought for full-time status and recognition for their important contribution to the institution: they brought quality instruction to service courses, and many engaged in teaching-focused research (on their own time), from publishing textbooks to developing effective instructional strategies and learning models.
As noted above, full-time instructional faculty are paid between 60 and 90 % that of full-time research faculty. But because they teach more courses, they are actually only 15 to 30 % the cost of research faculty.
How can you save more money? By replacing full-time instructors with sessional instructors. This would cut the cost of instructors by more than half, and save on the benefits.
Tykwinski replace two experienced, award-winning, full-time instructors with seven part-time instructors — novices who had never taught large lecture classes. No job posting. No call for applications. No interviews. Student learning and student perception of the subject was decimated. Dew, the VP Academic, supported this action.
Administrative positions
Aside from the President, the two most powerful positions at a university are the Vice-President Academic and the Vice-President Research. Historically, these have both been filled by research faculty. This puts the VP Academic in a quandary: when budgets are limited, should funding be allocated to teaching or research? For decades at the University of Alberta, the answer is clear: research. Period. Full stop. Siphon funding from teaching to fund research programs. Decimate undergraduate instruction to fund bloated research programs.
To rebalance the emphasis on teaching and learning, the VP Academic position should be restricted to instructional faculty, and the VP Research position restricted to research faculty.