Canadian Politics Today

First off I declare my bias. I have taught at over 15 colleges in Ontario over a 17 year span including George Brown, Centennial, Sheridan, Humber, Seneca, St. Lawrence, Algoma University and  10 private colleges.

Colleges started off as vocational institutions to teach hard skills, i.e., air conditioning, natural gas piping and maintenance, plumbing, culinary arts-cooking, photography, construction and mechanical skills, nursing, x-ray technician, and places to get industry designations like Chartered Human Resources Professional.

The Colleges then wanted to make more money so began one by  one adding social sciences, humanities which their original mandate did not include.

Colleges at one point had faculty like universities that through their unions had seniority which meant, each year they would get an increase in salary and have relative job security and there was little faculty turn over.

To avoid increase in pay, the universities began hiring part-timers. Their pretense was, the instructors full time had grown complacent and were lazy.

In some cases that was true of course. In other cases it was not and what in fact was happening is the colleges were in competition with one another for students so by hiring part-timers, they could then say to the students, if you don't like these part-timers, tell us and we will pressure them into giving you better marks or we will not hire them back.

Thus the colleges implemented a survey system and when students made bad surveys, the teachers were brought in and told oh your surveys are bad, bye bye....so instructors learned, give all the students 90's, look the other way and just pass them and you keep getting taken back.

Now please understand this is the reality of colleges today. The marks mean nothing. The reality of teaching in colleges today is students show up with no pen, paper, book but with an attitude when they do show up.

They tell instructors "hey I paid for this I will do what I want". Students sit in class playing on the cell phone, talking over teachers, walking in and out late and some skip all classes, show up for the exam or test and complain its too hard.

Its at the point instructors review the answers that will be on the tests and students still don't answer the tests properly.

Colleges in a rush to expand and make money, created all kinds of faculties and then to compete with other colleges let the students now run the marking-as long as the administrators have full enrollments, and no drop outs, they make millions.

Go look at the number of students in each college. Ask where the money comes from to fund these students and what they are learning-go look at the curriculum.

First off foreign students are cash cows. Immigration consultants bring them in by the tens of thousands telling them they get a 20 hour a week work visa if they attend college. These students work 40 hours and fall asleep in class but this is how they get to Canada and survive.

The born in Canada college students are playing the system to get inflated meaningless marks.

Now if you want to use a college for vocational job training and industry designation training it works. There are also dedicated good students and dedicated teachers of course.

However to pretend this is about faculty wanting money is b.s. Its not about money and never was. Money is not the issue. Its about how teachers are hired and how they are being pressured to work on temporary contracts where they have no control over the integrity of their marks and are threatened constantly.

Its about being paid for two hours a class but expected to work for free marking 60 to 80 papers for free.

Its about being paid two hours to teach but expected to work for free creating exams and curriculum.

Its about people with PH.d's who have never worked and only know research being offered $45,000 a year with no benefits of any kind and no holiday pay. Its about hiring inexperienced people who have no idea what they are teaching because you can may them $20, $30 an hour.

The Liberals are passing back to work legislation for cynical reasons. They will pose as saviours for the students and instructors ordering back pay to instructors for the weeks they did not work.

They will set up some phony committees to discuss the above concerns I mentioned and do nothing.

Please understand you have colleges which huge budgets and mini kingdoms who don't give a damn about students or faculty or their support employees and are being driven by executives who make huge bucks turning colleges into  mini empires.

Most colleges in Ontario are linking up to universities or trying to become universities.

Many community colleges set up campuses through private colleges to avoid unions in their entirety.

What I am telling you is the quality of courses and meaning of marks is suffering in this rush by college administrators to expand rather than focus on quality education. The administrators are confusing large buildings with quality education and if you take the time to see where the profit is going its not going to faculty and its not assuring students are getting better education-its going to build bigger and more campuses.