Campus Closures, Austerity Politics…and red herrings
Last night President David Agnew was on The Agenda http://https://www.tvo.org/video/troubling-times-for-ontarios-post-secondary-institutions, and, as you recall, he was also cited in The Star article on Saturday https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/drop-in-international-students-leads-seneca-polytechnic-to-close-one-campus/article_f79a28f2-92ec-11ef-9e87-d3a17359a320.html.
In both these media, his message was that Seneca, and other post-secondary institutions, are strongly feeling the financial strain of the reduction of international student study permits, announced last winter by the Federal government. In both these instances, he stated this as the cause for the “temporary” closing of Markham campus.
Markham campus has been the forgotten cousin of our campuses for many years now. It used to be a thriving campus with many programs housed there, but, over the last 7 years, these have all been moved to other campuses. The only remaining programming at Markham campus is the International Academy. Throughout, there have been numerous rumours of Seneca wanting to sell the campus and ending up leasing it out due to a weak seller’s market.
The International Academy bears a bit of scrutiny here. I first heard about it a year before the pandemic began. During a meeting with management, we were told about this exciting new venture…but no one could really answer why it was an “academy” and how it differed from our existing programs. It was intended to offer currently offered programs, but to only international students. At the time I questioned the wisdom of sending only international students to an isolated campus, without most of the supports and services, and away from the main body of our students. The pandemic, understandably, halted the roll-out of the academy.
Post-pandemic, it was re-launched, and, according to verbal accounts, with appropriate enrollment. I will add here that the College refuses to share information such as student enrollment numbers with the Union, even though the Collective Agreement, Article 28, states that we should have access to these data, among others, in order to be able to support long-term stability in our institutions. The Faculty who taught at the academy were primarily Partial-Load Faculty, who also worked in home departments at other campuses.
Now the International Academy is the focus of the latest development in the turbulence caused by the Federal government’s recent policy decisions.
It is a red herring to say that a whole campus is being closed. A campus that was mostly shuttered is being closed. To my knowledge, at this time, no Faculty jobs will be lost as a consequence of this closure. The currently enrolled students are being moved to Newnham and S@Y campus—a move that I welcome, given that they will finally have access to a collegiate experience among their peers.
Red herrings aside, President Agnew primarily spoke about the significant reduction in federal and provincial funding for the post-secondary sector. These consistent cuts, over many years, coupled by a tuition freeze, have resulted in a system that was designed to be public and serve the public…needing to find a financial crutch. International students became that financial crutch, as their exorbitant tuition fees subsidized domestic students. The over-reliance on international students was never a sustainable strategy.
Our division, CAAT-A, representing 16 000 Faculty at public Colleges in Ontario, has long been advocating for substantial increases of funding by both the Provincial and the Federal governments. We have long observed and critiqued the short-term thinking and utter lack of long-term planning that was behind the policy decisions of successive Provincial and Federal governments.
In the interview on The Agenda, President Agnew stated that Ontario’s post-secondary system is the lowest funded in the country. This is fundamentally true and has been for more than 40 years.
President Agnew went on to argue that short-term planning is a bad approach to building policies in immigration and education, because “short-termism is not helpful in something like education and immigration because, if I can put it in marketing terms, you build your brand over years and you can lose it overnight, and that’s what happened in Canada.”
I would argue that this extends well beyond a brand. The consistent underfunding and devaluation of our public post-secondary education system is symptomatic of policy trends that place corporate values over human values. It is part of a move away from the places where we live, and thrive, our communities, towards private enterprises that serve global capital. It is a foundational challenge to our democratic practices and principles. Universal access to robust and critical education is necessary for a diverse society to keep reimagining itself into a polity that values life.
We engage in collective bargaining because we deeply believe in the value of democracy in our political systems, our workplaces, and our communities. Let’s elect governments that share those values.
Anna Ainsworth,
President, OPSEU/SEFPO, Local 560