This week in austerity and budget cut news #3

  1. The CBC covered the ‘Queen’s not at risk of closure’ story on its website and in newscasts.
  2. On Wednesday CBC’s Ontario Morning did interviews on the situation at Queen’s with faculty member Elaine Power and student Ethan Chilcott.
  3. On Thursday another CBC segment, this time with Principal Deane appearing on Ontario Morning. Props to host Susan McNamee who did not accept pat answers.
  4. And on Friday, more time for the Queen’s story with an Ontario Morning call-in about the ‘ongoing financial crisis at Queen’s’.
  5. The National Post published a story about the spousal appointment that has been provided to the Provost’s partner, who will be joining the Department of English as a tenured faculty member in the summer. While spousal appointments are not unusual in academia, they are unusual at Queen’s, and typically they can only happen in the terms laid out in the Collective Agreement and when there is an advertised position for which the spouse has the relevant qualifications. Questions have been raised about the process involved in this appointment and the timing of it — in the midst of a hiring freeze.
  6. The Queen’s Journal has continued its very good coverage of budget/Provost/Nous issues. They have also printed some excellent letters to the Editor (see the second one – it is particularly powerful).
  7. The biggest news last week was the official announcement from the Provost’s office about the Queen’s Renew Project. This project will be directed by Nous Group consultants, an international firm that has been involved in restructuring projects at universities in Canada and elsewhere. First step at Queen’s is a ‘professional services review’ that will involve a survey of employees. The data from this survey will be compared to data that Nous has collected from (and at great cost to) other universities to see how we measure up to what Nous has determined to be best practices in the sector. One imagines that universities themselves – full of people who study higher education and survey design and business practices – have the in-house expertise to do this kind of work and could indeed be sharing it with each other without the intervention of an intermediary. While the university has launched a website for this “Renew” project, very little information has been shared with the campus community. Who is on the project team? Are different employee groups – the people who best know how the institution works – represented on the team? Is the Nous survey that has been launched at Queen’s unique to Queen’s or is it a standard Nous product? How will the data from the survey be shared with people at Queen’s? What collegial engagement processes are being developed for next steps?
  8. You can learn more about Nous and their Uniforum survey in a document prepared by the Administrative and Professional Staff Association at Simon Fraser University.
  9. If you would like to get an idea of how deeply embedded Nous is in the Canadian (or UK or Australian) higher education sector, you could google “Uniforum effectiveness survey”. Queen’s is clearly late to the Nous party.
  10. And, just for interest sake, a critique of bench-marking written by Roger Martin, former Dean of the Rotman School of Business at UofT.
  11. At last week’s Senate meeting the Provost announced that the university will be extending the timeline to a balanced budget from 2 to 3 years. Department Heads in the Faculty of Arts and Science have been asking for a longer timeline to permit better planning. In a previous special meeting of Senate in January, the Provost showed slides that suggested the impossibility of achieving a balanced budget over 2 years. So the timeline extension may simply be a case of the administration’s rhetoric catching up to their own figures. Nevertheless – the extra year is important.
  12. At the same Senate meeting, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science announced that departments would be able to schedule courses with enrolments under 10 for the 2024-25 academic year. Again, this provides a bit of relief for department heads. If academic considerations are to have any part to play in the decision-making around cuts, departments need time to explore options. This decision to allow small courses for next year led to the withdrawal of the motion on this topic that was to be voted on at FAS Faculty Board on Friday – and so the Faculty Board meeting was cancelled.
  13. Queen’s Students vs Cuts is looking for volunteers.
  14. Queen’s Coalition Against Austerity is having an anti-austerity social at the Grad Club on Tuesday 6 February from 5-7 pm.
  15. Queen’s Coalition Against Austerity is holding a reading group on Tuesday 13 February, 5:30 to 7:30 at the Grad Club. The article that will be up for discussion talks about corporate consultants (including Nous) in higher education.
  16. The QCAA website is in the process of being redesigned! Thanks for being patient if everything is not quite where is should be for the next few days!