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Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation recently endorsed the Alberta government’s cuts in post-secondary education and said it was time to face the “union leaders” of Alberta’s university and college.
Aside from that weird ad hominem insult to a highly paid lobbyist who works for a small and mysterious organization to level public servants, this is yet another misguided attempt to justify the cuts in post-secondary education for efficiency.
The CTF claims to have studied all collective bargaining agreements from universities and colleges since 2015 and concluded that our slight wage increases during this period were exaggerated compared to other Albertanian workers.
You are missing two important points.
First, the faculty salaries are not what the CTF claims.
2015-17 wage increases were negotiated before the 2014 recession or came as a result of arbitration awards.
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As of 2017, most faculty contracts have negotiated a 0% salary increase in both the NDP and UCP regimes.
That’s four years with no increases.
In fact, the average salary for a full-time faculty member at one of Alberta’s public universities was more than $ 2,000 (1.6%) below the Canadian university average for 2018-19, and is even lower when annual inflation is factored in.
The CTF leaves the impression that all college and university lecturers are overpaid, but this suggestion is also blatantly wrong: underpaid academic lecturers who deliver many of the courses in Alberta’s post-secondary institutions are severely underpaid.
Much like other workers in the gig economy, contract lecturers are paid less, work more, rarely have access to pensions or benefits, and most importantly, do not have time to do the kind of research Albertans need to diversify the provincial economy.
The over-reliance on “efficient” academic contract staff who are recruited every four months to teach ever larger classes does not have time to devote to creating the long-term research project or creating the scholarships to fund it.
Efficiency today means less research and even fewer patents that have to be marketed tomorrow.
Indeed, the CTF’s hunger for performance is short-sighted.
The provincial government also knows that Alberta competes for academic staff in an international job market.
It’s hard to imagine why top researchers, teachers, and scholars come to Alberta when they can earn more at other Canadian universities and support their work much more.
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It’s not just the top researchers who don’t come here.
Draconian salary cuts will inevitably lead to a brain drain as highly skilled faculties leave Alberta and take their intellectual property and research grants with them – just as the province urges faculty to receive Alberta’s “fair share” of federal research grants
As researchers and professors, we know that in Alberta, provincial indebtedness and our students’ tuition fees have grown dramatically.
These are the result of specific policy decisions made by the current government.
Jason Kenney and the UCP decided to cut corporate taxes, despite having approved an average annual tuition fee increase of 7% for the past three years.
Some programs at the University of Alberta have seen increases of up to 104% recently.
These increases simply offset the massive cuts in operating grants at our universities and colleges on the Alberta campus since the UCP came to power.
The provincial government lost $ 1.3 billion on its investment in the Keystone XL pipeline while cutting $ 400 million in universities and colleges.
Imagine if the ROI had flipped the UCP $ 1.3 billion for post-secondary education.
I’m willing to bet more than zero.
Alberta’s professors, faculty and researchers will play a vital role in diversifying the provincial economy.
Rather than attacking the innovators and teachers of this province, we believe that the public wants to support Alberta’s universities and colleges now that we need them most.
That means we have to stop the post-secondary cuts and get back to investing in the people who are driving them.
Lee Easton is President of the Mount Royal Faculty Association and a member of CAFA: Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations
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source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/guest-opinion-cuts-at-post-secondary-level-will-hurt-alberta/
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