1. QCAA’s Week of Action Against Austerity started on Monday with an excellent teach-in on Consulting Firms, Benchmarking, and the Politics of Ratings, with a special focus on Nous. More than 100 people attended the event, which was co-sponsored by QUFA. Dr. Michael Savage, Senior Research Analyst at OCUFA and former Nous employee, warned us that once engaged, consulting firms can be very hard to get rid of. Their profit margins are huge (up to 70%). Their business models depend on repurposing previous work and selling the same solutions to different clients. They tend to favour ‘graduate hires’ – people coming directly out of university with little workplace experience and very little knowledge of higher education. They also tend to promote employer-driven governance models and have little respect for or knowledge of the collegial governance that is common at universities across Canada. The teach-in also included presentations by two Queen’s professors: Dr. David McDonald from Global Development Studies and Dr. Norma Möllers from Sociology. They spoke about the problematic aspects of benchmarking and standardized performance measures, making arguments for the necessity of maintaining independent and democratic judgment about the university’s goals and services. The recording of the teach-in will be posted shortly on the QCAA website!
2. Also in regard to Nous: The Queen’s Renew Project webpage has been updated. Members of the Professional Services Working Group have been named. In a new phase of the Nous-led benchmarking project, selected managers and other staff are now being called to participate in a process of “activity data collection.” Staff are already raising important questions about the timing for this large task, which reflects a complete lack of consideration for the people who have to do this extra work. March is the busiest time in the academic calendar in the offices of academic departments (budgets, timetables, etc.) and the timeline for data collection runs from March 7th to 28th. We encourage staff to ask questions about the uses to which this material will be put, timelines, and outcomes, should you attend one of the “launch events.” It seems like it might also be useful to compare notes with people in different units.
3. On Wednesday evening Queen’s Students vs the Cuts and QCAA hosted a screening of “Whose University Is It?” in Kingston Hall 201, 6-8 pm. The documentary tells the story of student organizing against corporatization at Trent University in the wake of Mike Harris-era government funding cuts in the late 1990s. There were many parallels to the current moment. The film is available on Youtube.
4. Thursday’s event is another Anti-Austerity Social at the Grad Club, 5-7 pm. Space and supplies will be available for anyone who wants to make posters for Friday’s rally. The previous social was a blast. It’s good to be reminded of the many kind, funny, smart people with whom we work and study.
5. The Faculty of Arts and Science Faculty Board meeting will be held on Friday from 3:30-5:00 pm in MacCorry B201. Faculty Board in FAS, as in other faculties, is key to collegial governance, responsible for decisions relating to academic matters. Adjunct and permanent faculty members are able to vote in Faculty Board meetings. Staff and students have representatives who are voting members. In the current context it is important to not just maintain but to strengthen the bodies and mechanisms through which collegial governance functions at Queen’s.
6. Members of QCAA are collaborating with colleagues from Concordia University and the President of CAUT (Canadian Association of University Teachers) to offer a brief teach-in on the basics of university governance and decision-making structures, including information on budgets and the threats to collegial governance across the country. “University Governance 101: A Teach-in about University Structures and Who has Power Over What” will be held next Thursday, March 14th, 12:00-1:00 pm via Zoom.
7. Friday 5:30 pm, Richardson Hall: Students, staff, and faculty will join the No Cuts at Queen’s! rally to protest austerity measures that are undermining the educational mission of Queen’s. Timed to coincide with the quarterly Board of Trustees meeting, where key financial decisions are made, The No Cuts at Queen’s! rally marks the culmination of the Week of Action Against Austerity. Speakers will raise awareness of the impact of the cuts on students and employees, focusing on issues such as staff layoffs, large class sizes, the deteriorating living and learning and working environment, rent hikes for Queen’s housing tenants, international student precarity, and attacks on collective decision-making and transparency. Speakers will present alternative pathways the university could pursue to safeguard the high-quality educational experiences upon which Queen’s has built its reputation. It would be helpful if people could invite friends and share the event page on Facebook.
8. Ahead of the Board of Trustees meeting the university has released a new budget projection. Interestingly, the projection reports two figures for the deficit. The first figure reports a drop in the projected deficit down to $40.7 million (from initial projections of $62.8 million).
The second figure represents an improvement in transparency; it reports what the deficit would be if the university did not limit the amount of investment income from the Pooled Investment Fund used to support operations. In that case the deficit would drop further to $18.6 million.
There is reason to believe this figure is even lower at the current moment. This is because the report uses investment returns as of the end of November and markets have risen in value significantly since then. However, the report makes clear that investment income will not be used to address the deficit and will instead go to the general capital reserves “to invest in the University’s future” and “to fund priorities in support of the University’s academic and research mission.” For more discussion, see Tuesday’s blog post on the QCAA website.
9. At last week’s Senate meeting, the Provost and Principal were asked questions about Nous’s arrival on campus, the [poor] quality of the UniForum survey, and how it will be used to inform decisions about restructuring. The fact that Nous uses the same survey at dozens of institutions in very different national and international contexts was presented as beneficial to Queen’s in its efforts to align itself with institutions in the UK, Australia, and elsewhere in Canada.
Senators were told that the while the projected deficit has now dropped to $40.7 million, the portion that is being attributed to the Faculties is now $2.3 million more than it was at the beginning of the year.
The amount to be shared by other Faculties with FAS will increase slightly over each of the next 3 years – 1.5% to 1.75% to 2%.
The Principal expressed justified frustration with the current provincial funding situation, saying that the public assumes savings are to be found in the higher education sector, “but, if you’re on the ground here, you know that’s hard to believe.” Agreed.
10. In a webinar meant to assure alumni about the strength of Queen’s finances last week, the Principal answered questions about the budget situation. When asked what the vision guiding any cuts would be, he answered: “The guiding principle has been to protect as far as possible the academic mission, the quality of programs and the student experience. Those have been key and that will continue to guide us in the decisions we make, I think, [in] the longer term. Savings … will likely have to do with the provision of central services in the institution. I think that’s where we will have to go over time because it’s a highly decentralized institution. And I think if we are effective in delivering central support services or administrative support across the university, we will then be able to make sure that the appropriate amount of resources go into and remain in academic programs.”
It is interesting then to see that McMaster, which has been engaged with Nous since 2017, notes on its UniForum results page that it is the most “cost effective of the Canadian universities” and it “continues to have the most decentralized service delivery structure.”
Once again it was great to hear the Principal confirm the importance of humanities at Queen’s. He suggested that certain budget models put the humanities at risk: “You have to be really thoughtful about budget models because you don’t want … the elimination of vitally important programs for the growth of good citizens and the education of people as whole persons to be eroded by a kind of supply and demand model, which is reinforced by the budget model…Universities always address these issues through cross subsidies because there are fluctuations in enrollment interests.”
11. Last week the Whig Standard published an Opinion piece by Ken Cuthbertson, former editor (for 27 years) of the Queen’s Alumni Review, on the transformation of the university: “Queen’s has paid a steep price for embracing a corporate philosophy. It has been harmful financially, reputationally and in terms of the quality of what used to be called ‘a Queen’s education.’ It’s now hard to argue that Queen’s is offering anything different from what’s on offer at countless other Canadian universities. And by too many measures, it even looks like Queen’s is coming up short in that regard.”
Queen's Coalition Against Austerity 