"As One Who Serves" Themselves
Today there was a forum held in the Administration/Humanities Building at the University of Regina to explain some recent administrative decisions to the student body. The university administration unilaterally axed roughly 3500 credit hours from the courses offered at two of the federated colleges, Luther College and Campion College, and a number of sessional (contracted) lecturers were let go. The reason for these measures, stated by the university, is that because the enrollment in the federated colleges has unexpectedly and rapidly increased in the last year, the university needs to balance the credit hours back out to help alleviate university debt.
That's the official statement. Now for the admittedly oversimplified, yet pretty damn accurate version as far as I can tell:
First - The university, over the last few years, engages in a variety of construction projects: Two new residence buildings, a kinesiology building, a new lab building attachment, and now there's talk of building a hockey rink/multiplex. In this process they fail to adequately plan out such things like a maintenance budget for the new residences, which is around $1 million a year. The 'self-supporting infrastructure' (paying for itself and more) of the kinesiology building and the new residences obviously isn't working out as efficiently as hoped, or they wouldn't need to resort to these kinds of measures. Long story short - the university dug itself a financial hole.
Second - The normal process that the colleges' and the university faculties collaborate on to plan out class scheduling is circumvented by members of the university administration (note: not faculty or other academic positions) and class restrictions are imposed with no significant consideration of alternative measures.
What's the result here, for students? A lot of upper level classes had to be cancelled. These were classes that were being offered by Campion and Luther so that students could finish their degrees. The university worked out that these courses would be offered by Campion and Luther because main campus could not afford to offer these vital courses to the relatively small class sizes that needed them. A lot of lower level classes were cancelled, too, or amalgamated together, increasing class sizes. For anyone who might not know, larger class sizes = more difficulty for a professor to give quality instruction to all students. Also, a lot of quality sessional profs have been let go. A sessional professor is evaluated based on their performance from term to term. As a result, they typically work very hard and give great courses, because they need that kind of reputation to keep working, and possibly move towards gaining tenure at an institution. Overall picture: Quality of education suffers, while students pay the same amount of tuition, which is now forced to go to main campus, which from what it looks like, sinks a good portion of its budget into barely, if not unsustainable construction efforts.
Personally, I am a Luther student. I switched over from being enrolled at main campus because the way the Luther faculty treated me as a student was noticeably superior to the U of R. I got more personal, quality advising on my academic path, I was made more aware of scholarships and bursaries, and Luther profs have been much more approachable and reachable and helpful on the whole of my experience. As someone pointed out during the discussion forum, this is why Luther and Campion have increased enrollment.
As for the forum, I was impressed with how it ran as a whole. Representatives from both colleges and the university were given a few minutes at the beginning to explain their case, and then a question period was opened to the floor. The representatives from the colleges (the presidents from each) outlined a story that was very much in line with all the 'rumours' I had heard in the previous months via the Religious Studies Students' Association (where some of our members attended faculty meetings). The U of R representative (vice president, on account of the president being in Ottawa to lobby for Federal funding for post-secondary education) contradicted none of these explanations, but very often failed to be specific with the details and reasoning behind the actions being taken. I was impressed with the student body - they would not settle for flimsy, rhetoric-filled responses that provided no real useful information. The U of R Vice President had to stand up and return to the podium several times to 're-answer' a question that was already addressed (very poorly). This is the kind of public, and journalistic integrity that the world needs, and it was heartening to see it happen in front of my eyes.
The 2006/2007 academic year will be a bit of a sad one, as this financial fiasco isn't likely to change by then. More discussion is scheduled for upcoming budgets and financial strategies, and hopefully now that this is out in the public view (where it decidedly wasn't before, deliberately) maybe a more intelligent, creative and fair solution can by plotted out. I really hope the university can do this... the school motto is "As One Who Serves", not "As One Who Serves Themselves and Their Own Immediate Interests". This should be lived up to at all costs.
That's the official statement. Now for the admittedly oversimplified, yet pretty damn accurate version as far as I can tell:
First - The university, over the last few years, engages in a variety of construction projects: Two new residence buildings, a kinesiology building, a new lab building attachment, and now there's talk of building a hockey rink/multiplex. In this process they fail to adequately plan out such things like a maintenance budget for the new residences, which is around $1 million a year. The 'self-supporting infrastructure' (paying for itself and more) of the kinesiology building and the new residences obviously isn't working out as efficiently as hoped, or they wouldn't need to resort to these kinds of measures. Long story short - the university dug itself a financial hole.
Second - The normal process that the colleges' and the university faculties collaborate on to plan out class scheduling is circumvented by members of the university administration (note: not faculty or other academic positions) and class restrictions are imposed with no significant consideration of alternative measures.
What's the result here, for students? A lot of upper level classes had to be cancelled. These were classes that were being offered by Campion and Luther so that students could finish their degrees. The university worked out that these courses would be offered by Campion and Luther because main campus could not afford to offer these vital courses to the relatively small class sizes that needed them. A lot of lower level classes were cancelled, too, or amalgamated together, increasing class sizes. For anyone who might not know, larger class sizes = more difficulty for a professor to give quality instruction to all students. Also, a lot of quality sessional profs have been let go. A sessional professor is evaluated based on their performance from term to term. As a result, they typically work very hard and give great courses, because they need that kind of reputation to keep working, and possibly move towards gaining tenure at an institution. Overall picture: Quality of education suffers, while students pay the same amount of tuition, which is now forced to go to main campus, which from what it looks like, sinks a good portion of its budget into barely, if not unsustainable construction efforts.
Personally, I am a Luther student. I switched over from being enrolled at main campus because the way the Luther faculty treated me as a student was noticeably superior to the U of R. I got more personal, quality advising on my academic path, I was made more aware of scholarships and bursaries, and Luther profs have been much more approachable and reachable and helpful on the whole of my experience. As someone pointed out during the discussion forum, this is why Luther and Campion have increased enrollment.
As for the forum, I was impressed with how it ran as a whole. Representatives from both colleges and the university were given a few minutes at the beginning to explain their case, and then a question period was opened to the floor. The representatives from the colleges (the presidents from each) outlined a story that was very much in line with all the 'rumours' I had heard in the previous months via the Religious Studies Students' Association (where some of our members attended faculty meetings). The U of R representative (vice president, on account of the president being in Ottawa to lobby for Federal funding for post-secondary education) contradicted none of these explanations, but very often failed to be specific with the details and reasoning behind the actions being taken. I was impressed with the student body - they would not settle for flimsy, rhetoric-filled responses that provided no real useful information. The U of R Vice President had to stand up and return to the podium several times to 're-answer' a question that was already addressed (very poorly). This is the kind of public, and journalistic integrity that the world needs, and it was heartening to see it happen in front of my eyes.
The 2006/2007 academic year will be a bit of a sad one, as this financial fiasco isn't likely to change by then. More discussion is scheduled for upcoming budgets and financial strategies, and hopefully now that this is out in the public view (where it decidedly wasn't before, deliberately) maybe a more intelligent, creative and fair solution can by plotted out. I really hope the university can do this... the school motto is "As One Who Serves", not "As One Who Serves Themselves and Their Own Immediate Interests". This should be lived up to at all costs.
posted by Jasper C. Coligny at 2:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home