This text is part of the special section Unionism
Universities are underfunded, claims the Quebec Federation of University Professors (FQPPU). At a time when many collective agreements are being renegotiated, the government is working on a new university funding formula. The federation warns of the overload of teachers and the need to provide them with a more competitive salary.
Collective agreements having been extended during the pandemic, many professors’ unions are in negotiations, such as those at the University of Montreal (UdeM), the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi (UQAC), the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (UQTR), Concordia University, TELUQ and the National Institute of Scientific Research, indicates Madeleine Pastinelli, president of the FQPPU. “The issues are not the same everywhere, but in almost all universities, there is a problem with the employment floor,” she laments. In other words, the number of teachers is too low.
At the master’s and doctoral levels, for example, the student-faculty ratio has almost doubled since 1995, going from 4.5 students per professor to 8.05. “This is all the more worrying as all the data, including those from the Ministry of Higher Education, predict a significant increase (at least 10%) in student numbers by 2030. And the largest increase “high concerns foreign students, whose supervision requires more time”, underlines Mme Pastinelli.
Underfunded universities
You only need to compare yourself to other Canadian provinces to understand the problem of university funding. “If we wanted to bring Quebec back to the level of the Canadian average in terms of the amounts available per full-time equivalent student, we would have to reinject an additional $1 billion per year into the network,” explains the president. If we wanted to catch up with British Columbia, it would even be 2 billion more per year. » Abroad, Denmark spends 58% more per student and the United Kingdom 27%.
Quebec also performs poorly in terms of salaries, underlines the FQPPU. According to a comparison based on Statistics Canada data, the remuneration of full-time university professors in the province was 11% lower on average in 2020-2021 than that of their colleagues elsewhere in Canada, which harms the attractiveness of our universities for the best professors and researchers. “Their recruitment is an international market: candidates look at open positions everywhere and go where the conditions are most interesting. In Quebec, we struggle to be competitive compared to other Canadian universities and the private sector,” worries Madeleine Pastinelli.
Find the winning formula
The government is expected to announce in the coming months how it intends to revise its university funding formula, which is mainly based on full-time equivalent student numbers (EEETP). “This formula has well-known perverse effects, one of the most important of which is the race for customers,” explains Mme Pastinelli who notes that our universities compete and spend on their promotion and advertising in order to recruit as many students as possible. “It is not in the collective interest. Everyone would like every dollar invested by the Ministry of Higher Education to be used to train students and not for universities to cannibalize each other,” laments the president.
The FQPPU hopes for a reduction in the share of funding that depends on the EEETP, but is worried about what will replace it. “The ministry talks about encouraging success, but we should not switch from the race for customers to that of printing diplomas. The main thing is the quality of the training,” warns the president, for whom funding linked to diplomas would restrict access to higher education, with universities being encouraged to be more selective during admissions.
The federation also fears another performance-based funding, which would be based on the productivity of professors linked to research grants and publications. “This would encourage them to stick to fashionable research objects, to the detriment of innovative approaches or original questions,” warns M.me Pastinelli.
Reintroducing at least 30% unconditional funding would be the best solution to use adequate criteria, according to the FQPPU. She is campaigning to return to this calculation based on expenditure (mainly payroll) which had already proven itself until its abolition in 2000.
“A university is first and foremost a place where we do training, teaching and research,” recalls Madeleine Pastinelli. Recruiting more teachers and paying them competitive salaries so as not to find ourselves lagging behind the OECD, that’s the priority! »
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