The academic year at Canada’s universities is well underway albeit in a mainly online/remote format. It has been an extraordinary transition on the part of faculty and staff accomplished on fairly short notice. Developing or converting materials from a classroom lecture format to a more structured online delivery system has been very time intensive. An online course requires substantially more time on the part of instructors for organization and development and it is also more work for the students taking the course. Unlike a classroom environment where the instructor can tailor the pace of weekly delivery to accommodate progress and needs, the weekly online modules once set with their materials, schedules, quizzes and assignments, can move forward quite relentlessly.
Interestingly enough, universities have been pressuring their faculty for years to do more online because of the supposed flexibility it affords students and the anticipated “efficiencies” but this year’s rapid transition has revealed the mixed blessing that online university teaching is. It turns out that doing online teaching well is a bit more complicated than simply piling everyone into Zoom lectures. It helps to have infrastructure that does not collapse when too many users sign on. It also helps to have supports for faculty and staff doing the teaching like proper computer equipment, but six months in everyone is pretty much still on their own at home improvising as they go along. And it turns out Zoom lectures and Zoom office hours are about as well attended as regular classes - I will leave that to the reader to interpret as they wish.
Of course, much of the interest this year has focused on the apparent financial effects on universities from COVID-19. In the spring, there was much widespread speculation that enrolment was going to collapse as domestic students stayed home and international students were unable to come back into the country and some institutions began pre-emptive action. It turns out that this did not exactly come to pass. Across the country, enrolments appear to be stable or even higher than anticipated at many universities and even international students have been able to register for courses online. Even at Lakehead, overall enrolments are stable as the accompanying figure showing recent numbers to date suggests. Indeed, the bigger long-term problem is not overall enrolment collapse but universities competing with themselves for students by expanding online enrolment and poaching students from each other.
With the enrolment apocalypse over for the time being, the media doom frenzy is focusing on other financial effects like “half-full” residences and “shuttered” food services and the “decline in public funding”. However, with fewer students on campus, there are also fewer costs particularly in staffing like food services and cleaning much of which has been contracted out. Moreover, with everyone working from home, heating, air conditioning and hydro costs are reduced. And, as for the decline in public funding, that has been underway for some time. Governments have wanted universities to reduce their dependence on public funding and as a result universities have raised tuition fees, recruited more international students and branched out into research and ancillary fees for additional revenue.
Essentially, our universities are really no longer publicly funded but publicly assisted and the bigger question is why some of our universities have not simply taken a leap and gone completely private? Part of the answer is probably that governments cannot leave things well enough alone. Even if universities went private, governments would probably continue to regulate tuition for political reasons as they do now thereby ham-stringing university operations just as they do now.
The other interesting development is that our governments are continually telling us they have your back and how they are there to support you and yet despite a nearly $400 billion dollar deficit at the federal level and multi-billion dollar deficits provincially - shoveling all types of money out to individuals and businesses – still no real support package for universities. Given that universities have held their own on enrolment, one might expect a little help to deal with fixed costs and the decline in revenues from ancillary services. Public funding for universities peaked in 2010-11 and has declined since, a little bit of help during the pandemic is not unreasonable.
Yet, it appears that universities are on their own. Governments generally do not like things they cannot fully control and recruit for their political purposes and university academics generally fall into that category. Governments have been given carte blanche in their approach here because the public supports them. The general public essentially perceives academics as public school teachers with a longer summer vacation. It still amazes me how many people ask me every September if I have gone back to work. I have given up explaining what I do – it is a lost cause.
At the same time, the public perception is understandable. University employment is a good job. Academics like their work and that probably does generate envy given that many people do not enjoy their jobs. However, what academics do is still work and just because faculty like their job should not represent an opportunity to make them miserable. Indeed, academics are not the only ones with good jobs at a university – they are actually outnumbered by staff and administrators who also have nice jobs and working conditions because students come to the university to take courses taught by academic faculty. Which brings me to my next point…
Compounding all of this is the opportunity that COVID-19 has provided to university boards and administrations. Despite the fact that enrolment is stable or rising at many institutions in the wake of COVID, the continued doom mongering is a useful tool for extracting concessions. Indeed, during a pandemic, one might expect a pull back from mercenary behaviour, but it appears that across the country, those university faculty associations unfortunate enough to have their contracts expire during the pandemic are facing particularly brutal demands for concessions on the part of university administrations. Apparently, despite the theatrical performances of our prime ministerial soliloquist in chief in Ottawa, we are not all in this together.