FQPPU Newsletter - November 2006

Summary

• FQPPU Priorities
• Academic Institutions: Their Role Within Society, Mission and Regulation Mechanisms
• University Funding
• News from the Federal Council
• University Reforms Observatory
• Observatory on Academic Achievement
• Teaching Staff
• Academic Freedom
• Globalization and Higher Education
• News in Brief
• Book Review
• Suggested Readings

2006-2007 FQPPU PRIORITIES

The Executive Committee selected four (4) priority issues for 2006-2007:

• university funding, base funding and research funding;
• faculty renewal;
• the role of professors in academic affairs and university management;
• information technologies, communications and their impact on the future of universities and on the role of professors;

and an international issue:

• opposition to the inclusion of university academic activities in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations and union solidarity .

The priorities also include public action, the defence of members’ interests and positions, as well as the improvement of internal communication practices, debates and management.

ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS: THEIR ROLE WITHIN SOCIETY, MISSION AND REGULATORY MECHANISMS

On September 22, the FQPPU presented a memorandum before the Commission de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur (CERU) of the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation (CSE). In order to advise the Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport (MELS), the CERU consulted the organizations directly concerned with the future of universities. In its memorandum, L’institution universitaire : son rôle dans la société, sa mission et ses mécanismes de régulation (Academic Institutions: Their Role Within Society, Mission and Regulatory Mechanisms), the FQPPU reviewed the core missions of universities and the values to be preserved and promoted so that academic institutions can assume their specific role within society. The FQPPU also emphasized the importance for universities to adopt decision-making structures as well as management and regulatory mechanisms in order to carry out their academic missions and to develop their potential, which mainly lies with the individuals who make up universities.

UNIVERSTY FUNDING

We will examine the issue of university funding throughout the year. Over the summer, the FQPPU announced its positions and joined forces with its Canadian and Quebec partners in order to take public action with regard to university funding.

Le financement des universités : urgence d’agir – 21 juin 2006

La rentrée sera difficile: les surplus s'accumulent à Ottawa et les universités crient toujours famine - 25 juillet 2006

Pour un réinvestissent sans conditions dans les universités – 8 août 2006

Le réinvestissement en enseignement supérieur: une situation d'urgence qui exige une hausse immédiate des transferts fédéraux - 17 novembre 2006

The Comité sur le financement des universités, which was established in the spring of 2006, reconvened its work based on its mandate from the Federal Council. The committee is currently gathering and analyzing data pertaining to university budgets in order to inform its members and to help them develop informed positions with regard to the various issues related to university funding.

In the spring (see SPUQ-info No. 249, April 2006), the Syndicat des professeurs et professeures de l'UQAM (SPUQ) began a series of feature articles on university funding. The first article, “Le définancement, une tendance mondiale” (p. 10-11), by Gaétan Breton, provides some background information and explains the entire process. Another article in this issue, entitled L’Université de Montréal à l’heure de la performance (p. 8-9), by professor Gérard Baudet from the Université de Montréal, makes the connection between university funding, university management and the university’s mission. This article was first published on March 10, 2006, in Le Devoir.

NEWS FROM THE FEDERAL COUNCIL

IS EDUCATION PROTECTED UNDER GATS? ACCORDING TO CLAUDE VAILLANCOURT, NOTHING IS CERTAIN

Invited by the FQPPU to present a conference in November at its Federal Council, Claude Vaillancourt, from ATTAC-Québec, eloquently explained the looming threat to education posed by the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

A novelist, literature professor and the Secretary General of ATTAC-Québec (Association québécoise pour la taxation des transactions financières et l’action citoyenne), Claude Vaillancourt has given a great deal of thought to the increasing trend toward the systematic merchandising of services. Écosociété just published his book entitled Mainmise sur les services. Privatisation, déréglementation et autres stratagèmes.

In his opinion, GATS could undertake an offensive aimed at liberalizing education. Although the Doha negotiations have been suspended, a group chaired by New Zealand, which includes members from Australia, the United States and Japan, is promoting greater inclusion of higher education under GATS. We are aware that bilateral and multilateral negotiations are continuing behind the scenes. Claude Vaillancourt pointed out that Canada’s position is incredibly ambiguous. On the one hand, Canada claims to be protecting public education. However, Canada seems to be receptive to the idea of liberalizing private education. In the same breath, it adds that this position may change in the future.

In light of the fact that university budgets come from a variety of sources, including tuition and research sponsors, where do we draw the line between public and private education? And who will determine this? The WTO panel, with its “principle of transparency,” according to which States must subject their regulations to the “necessity test” and demonstrate that they do not impede trade?

Taking action

Claude Vaillancourt mentioned that history has shown that the World Trade Organization responds to pressure. He recommends taking a position that calls for the complete removal of the education sector from trade agreements. We can draw inspiration from the Coalition québécoise sur la diversité culturelle: due to their efforts and those of other organizations around the world, the cultural sector has been removed from international trade agreements. We must keep up pressure at all levels: at the provincial level, since the federal government cannot take action in education matters without the consent of the provinces; at the federal level at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade; and at the international level, by joining forces with Education International. Claude Vaillancourt asserted that the teaching profession should not be handed over to business people. He concluded that we must prevent our profession from being ruined.

TWO CONFERENCES ARE BEING ORGANIZED

In March 2007: “Becoming a University Professor” (tentative title)

Since the work conditions of new professors are a major concern for the FQPPU, it published a research report in April 2006 by Nathalie Dyke entitled Le renouvellement du corps professoral dans les universités au Québec. Profil et expérience d’insertion des recrues en début de carrière. [Renewal of professors in Quebec universities – Profile and integration experience of new professors early in their career]. This report documented the rocky path of new recruits, nearly one third of who quit their jobs within the first five years.

In the spring of 2007, academic staff will be invited to a conference that will deal with career preparation, doctoral studies, job entry, the first years on the job, as well as integration and access to tenure. Made up of Pierre Hébert (Université de Sherbrooke and Secretary of the FQPPU Executive Committee), Nathalie Dyke (independent researcher), Chantal Leclerc (Université Laval) and Frédéric Deschenaux (Université du Québec à Rimouski), the organizing committee is contacting speakers from Quebec and elsewhere who will share their thoughts on various aspects of the academic carrier with the people who are on the front lines. Please pass the word on to new professors.

In May 2007 at ACFAS: “Creating and Sharing Knowledge in the Age of ICTs: Their Impact on the Role of Professors”

Whether you are an ICT “victim” or wiz, this conference-workshop will encourage you to take a critical look at the dominant ICT trends in universities and to discuss the structuring effects of decisions on professors’ roles and university management. This seminar will also examine alternative approaches that respect the university’s autonomy and the exercise of academic freedom, as well as approaches that regard the university’s core mission as a public service.

Proposed by the FQPPU for the 75th ACFAS Congress, which will be held from May 7 to 11, 2007, in Trois-Rivières, this workshop will illustrate ICT applications and deal with the issues affecting all the university’s key players. The FQPPU’s orientation committee, made up of Renée Fountain (Université Laval), Jean-Claude Guédon (Université de Montréal), François Pettigrew (Téluq-UQAM), and Pierre Lebuis, Vice President of the Federation’s external affairs, is responsible for organizing this ICT conference.

UNIVERSITY REFORMS OBSERVATORY

The International University Reforms Observatory (ORUS) was created in July 2002 by a network of European and Latin American academics who developed the first global proposal for University reforms in 2001, a process that made possible the identification, in various countries, of innovators within the University. These innovators share two characteristics: they are people trying to make sense of things, concerned with the setting up of a new social contract between University and society; and their innovations are usually based on observations that underline the needs for change.

ORUS programs provide for an ongoing critical thought on reform matters, anticipating topical questions and problems, and promoting the promising approach of transdisciplinary research.

ORUS fact sheets are documented syntheses and summaries of initiatives proposed by the members of the ORUS network. They are the quickest way to become acquainted with reform strategies and proposals, experiences of reforms led in some universities, and diagnoses on the situation of higher education.

They provide access to additional information (documents, contact with the author and ORUS, links with other fact sheets, etc.). You may also add your own comments to these fact sheets.

Three categories of fact sheets (“Governance and university,” “Society and university” and “Knowledge Transmission”) are available.

OBSERVATORY ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

In March 2006, the Centre for Research and Development on Academic Achievement (CRIRES) at Université Laval launched the International Observatory on Academic Achievement (IOAA) to make it easier to compare studies from around the world and to facilitate communication among researchers.

The IOAA’s mission is essentially to review literature from research centres in North America, Europe and South America. Its bilingual Web site provides a 400- to 600-word summary of each key article. The Web site currently contains reviews of articles written in French and English only, but eventually literature in Spanish may be covered as well.

The articles deal with topics such as behavioural problems, educational inequalities, educational policy analysis, and the school environment. “We focus on the period from kindergarten to the end of secondary school, but post-secondary studies are not completely excluded, since we review studies that assess the impact of students’ early schooling on their success at university,” explains Claire Lapointe, director of the centre. Source: University Affairs, May 2006

TEACHING STAFF

Shortage of university professors

There is a growing supply of scientists and engineers with doctorates in the natural and applied sciences occupation but, on the other hand, there is a potential for future shortages of university professors. Are PhDs turning away from educational services towards higher-paying industries for employment? Find out in Statistics Canada’s Innovation Analysis Bulletin, pages 15-17.

Teaching staff salaries

On July 11, 2006, Statistics Canada announced that preliminary data (survey 3101) on full-time teaching staff at 63 Canadian universities that have more than 100 teachers, were available for the academic year 2005/2006. This information is collected annually under the "University and College Academic Staff System".

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Academic freedom imposes responsibilities that academics must reassess within the context of the globalization of higher education.

On June 30, 2006, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Recommendation 1762 on academic freedom and university autonomy. The recommendation is based on the following principles: “The academic mission to meet the requirements and needs of the modern world and contemporary societies can be best carried out when universities are morally and intellectually independent of all political or religious authority and economic power. Accountability, transparency and quality assurance are pre-conditions for granting universities academic freedom and institutional autonomy.”

GLOBALIZATION ON HIGHER EDUCATION

To inform its members about ongoing negotiations in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), Education International (EI) has published the bulletin CommercEDUCATION.

EI represents over 80 professors associations from the higher education and research sector around the world. Among the issues that most concern teaching staff working in the sector, EI vigorously defends the exercise of academic freedom, the protection of intellectual property rights and the right of all teaching staff to collective bargaining. EI strongly opposes current ongoing attempts to deregulate and privatize higher education and research. It offers an analysis and a strategy to prevent the inclusion of higher education and research in GATS negotiations. The Taskforce on Globalization of Higher Education was set up to examine the connections between economic globalization and education.

NEWS IN BRIEF

• The second issue of SPUL-LIEN deals with health in the workplace (in french). It contains an article by Marie-France Maranda on professional burnout, and one by Chantal Leclerc on psychological harassment. This article is based on work carried out by the FQPPU’s ad hoc committee, whose report, entitled Psychological Harassment Among University Professors and Academic Staff: An Awareness and Action Guide, was published in February 2006. You may contact the FQPPU to obtain a paper copy of the report and awareness guide.
• “There’s a genuine and growing interest in entrepreneurship and the commercialization of ideas among Canadian science students. But the challenge,” says Anne Swift, president of Young Inventors International, “is getting Canadian institutions on board in a comprehensive way, by providing a breadth of programs, centralized support and networking opportunities to students who want to be entrepreneurial.” Read the article in the August/September 2006 issue of University Affairs.

BOOK REVIEW

Rouillard, Jacques. Apprivoiser le syndicalisme en milieu universitaire. Histoire du Syndicat général des professeurs et professeures de l’Université de Montréal. Montreal: Boréal, 2006.

By Roger de la Garde, Associate Professor, Université Laval.

On the occasion of its 30th year of accreditation, the Syndicat général des professeurs et professeures de l’Université de Montréal (SGPUM) assigned a historical research project to Jacques Rouillard, history professor at that university, specialist on the trade-union movement in Quebec and author of several books on the social history of Quebec, including Le syndicalisme québécois, deux siècles d’histoire (Boréal, 2004). One of the goals of this book is “to inform young colleagues about the origin of the present-day trade-union discourse” (Preface).

The author meticulously carried out this broad mandate, which he received from the SGPUM, and the result is an appealing, rich work. He endeavoured to understand how the trade-union “we” gradually developed in stages, sometimes under turbulent and divisive circumstances. The author also discusses how academics gradually adopted trade unions (p. 12).

As with all histories on university trade unions, the Université de Montréal’s trade-union history is relatively short, but it is deeply rooted in a history that “begins well before the 1970s.”

[…] it takes place in a turbulent climate marked by a split between two generations of professors, whose leaders viewed the role of universities and the interests of professors differently. In 1955, an initial effort to raise the profile of professors’ professional interests led to the creation of the Association des professeurs de l’Université de Montréal, formerly known as the Association des professeurs de la Faculté des sciences, founded 10 years earlier. During the 1930s, the first solidarity movement began after the creation of a professors’ committee (p. 12).

While every university trade-union history is unique, Rouillard points out that these “histories” took place within the broader historical movement of the bureaucratization Quebec universities and the birth of trade-union movement in the public and quasi-public sectors. Meticulously reconstructing the chronology in detail, as well as the recounting of the events and the men and women who shaped them, this well-written and thoroughly researched book deals in general with the trade-union movement in Quebec and in particular with the interrelations, cross-influences and borrowings between the trade-union movement in the public and quasi-public sectors and the trade-union movement in the university milieu.

The book begins with a chronology of the events that marked the early history of the general union of Université de Montréal professors: on September 25, 1933, the Assemblée générale des professeurs was formed and a propaganda committee was set up to assist the Université de Montréal. It concludes with the acceptance, at a general assembly meeting on December 5, 2005, of the agreement in principle on a collective agreement, effective from June 1, 2005 to May 31, 2008.

The author thus provides an overview of the long path followed by Université de Montréal professors “from an associative, participatory, organic view of the university to the integration of a trade-union model into their professional lives, whose main purpose is to defend and protect the interests of its members” (p. 232). In many respects, this path is similar to the one followed by other university trade unions during the 1960s and 1970s, when Quebec universities were undergoing a transformation and becoming more bureaucratized.

Further reading Beaucage, Benoît. Les trente ans du SPPUQAR (1973-2003). Une histoire de ténacité et de solidarité. Rimouski: SPPUQAR, 2003.

Pettigrew, Louise. Une histoire de solidarité syndicale. Les 25 ans du syndicat des professeurs et professeures de l'Université Laval (1974-1999). Quebec City: SPUL, 1999.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Lamarche, Thomas (dir.). Capitalisme et éducation. Paris: Nouveaux Regards / Syllepses, 2006. (To obtain this book, please contact The Institut de recherche de la FSU)

ORUS. Université, quel avenir ? Propositions pour penser une réforme. Éditions Charles Leopold Mayer, 2003.

Washburn, Jennifer. University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education. New York: Basic Books, 2006.

Lefebvre, Alain and Trompette, Pascale (eds.) Marchandisation et connaissance(s), Sciences de la Société, no 66, 2005, Presses Universitaires du Mirail.