CUPE in the post-secondary education sector
CUPE is pleased to have this opportunity to share our perspective on Canada’s post-secondary education system with the sub-committee. The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) represents approximately 450,000 public sector workers in Canada, including almost 40,000 members in universities and colleges. Our post-secondary members work in every province, as food service workers, administrative and student support staff, technicians, tradespeople, maintenance and custodial staff, security personnel, groundworkers, teaching and research assistants, sessional instructors and library staff. A good number of CUPE members are students in the system. Many others are parents of students attending colleges and universities, or parents with younger children worried about whether their children will be able to get a post-secondary education.
CUPE members share the sense of crisis that seems to motivate the Senate’s timely review of post-secondary education. With governments collectively cutting millions of dollars from the system, our members see services declining to the point where the quality of education being provided is also declining. As well, we are coming into contact with more and more students who are experiencing tremendous financial pressures, including those that are unable to continue because they can no longer afford it.
CUPE members on campus are seeing all kinds of services cut in the attempt to deal with declining funding from governments. Shorter office hours, bigger class sizes, small and outdated library stock, more dependence on technology, instead of human contact, to administer student services, elimination of important services like counselling that are the support that gets some students through their program, deteriorating buildings due to contacting out and staff cuts are just some of the examples.Unfortunately, statistics bear out our observations that quality is starting to suffer. Per student expenditures for libraries, instruction and maintenance are all significantly lower than they were in the 1970s. Maintenance costs are especially worrisome, as many buildings, research facilities, mechancial and electrical equipment are nearing the end of their lifespan and in dire need of replacement or refurbishment. In the post-secondary sector, we are in danger of squandering a huge public investment in public sector infrastructure.
The need for national standards
The legislation implementing the Canada Health and Social Transfer mandated the establishment of shared principles and objectives for social programs. More recently, we have seen the Ministerial Council process in which provinces are discussing national social programs. National standards for post-secondary education must be included in this process, and the federal government must be involved in ensuring it has a role in the delivery of programs. The public will support the development of national standards – in 1995, an Angus Reid poll reported that 88% of Canadians believe that national standards of service for post-secondary education are essential.
As provinces hold constitutional jurisdiction for education, such standards must be developed jointly by the federal and provincial governments. CUPE, along with many other organizations, recognizes the need for special arrangements for Quebec, when so desired by Quebec. However, respecting Quebec’s right to special arrangements does not preclude the rest of Canada working together across the country to ensure the accessibility, portability and universality of post-secondary education.
We would encourage the sub-committee to build proposals for national standards from the “Pan-Canadian Values for Higher Education” listed in Senator Bonnell’s Study Notes, September 1996. We would endorse Senator Bonnell’s list of “values”, with the following comments:
1. Post-secondary education should be publicly funded.
To be accessible and accountable, post-secondary institutions should be governed on a not-for-profit basis. As well, public funds should be directed only to public sector universities and colleges.
Public funding is necessary to ensure that universities and colleges can meet the needs of all students and the broader community, and not only the more narrowly defined needs of those who can pay, for example, corporations.
This is not to say that there is not a role for financial support from business. However, mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure that corporate financial support does not compromise the comprehensiveness and autonomy of the education being offered. Business benefits from the work of the post-secondary system; ideally, their support should come with no strings attached. In fact, tax reform is the best way to ensure that business makes a fair contribution to a public system of colleges and universities.
Without a strong commitment to public post-secondary education, the system is being rapidly commerialized. Some of the features of commercialization include: management and senior administration who function more like corporate managers and less like academic leaders, administrators with outside interests/holdings in the business world, research and education programs that are assessed according to commercial viability, faculty encouraged to become entrepreneurs, downward pressure on staff wages and infrastructure to enhance “competitiveness”, a focus on the commercial research product, rather than on the education being offered and program restructuring to attract external private revenue.
2. Post-secondary education should be affordable and accessible.
At this point in time, affordability is a key issue for the post-secondary system, and the most important aspect of the accessibility issue.
All individuals with the capacity and desire to attend college or university should have that opportunity, irrespective of their background.
We discuss these issues below under “Making post-secondary education affordable for students”.
3. Students should be guaranteed mobility from province to province.
Failure to institute national standards will ensure that there is less, instead of more, mobility from province to province. As levels of support increasingly differ among provinces, the quality and accessibility of post-secondary education will vary more and more.
4. Our higher education system should be comprehensive.
We agree that students should have a full range of options, including college and university, professional and vocational training, distance education and adult education. Furthermore, all of these options should be offered through the public system to ensure that their programs are accessible, comprehensive and responsive to the needs of the broader community.
5. Courses taken at one institution should be easily transerable or portable.
Such initiatives, though underway in some areas, are long overdue. Students, and the public which funds the system, can no longer afford a system in which credits are not portable. Credits acquired in public sector institutions should be transferable between all public sector institutions in the country. All barriers which deter or prevent the movement of students between institutions and provinces need to be eliminated. At the same time, we should not be looking at a strict standarization of curricula, but at giving priority to assessing equivalencies in a fair and open way.
Adoption of principles like these would go a long way towards improving the current system, as well as mitigating the negative effects of the funding cuts currently underway.
While such principles or standards would need to be negotiated with the provinces, all governments should also ensure that negotiations happen in a public, transparent way. We would propose the establishment of a national advisory council on post-secondary education to monitor and provide input into the process. Such an advisory council could represent all public sector organizations in post-secondary education, including but not limited to organizations representing students, teaching and non-teaching staff, as well as community members, especially those representing groups which have traditionally not been well-served by our post-secondary education system.
The need for the federal role and federal spending
In recent months, we have been disturbed by the lack of federal action on developing national standards for social programs.
While provincial governments hold constitutional responsibility for education, there is a balance required between federal and provincial roles. Both levels of government should renew their commitment to post-secondary education, clarify their respective roles, and build a strong, effective partnership to provide Canadians with the best possible system.
The reasons for federal involvement are obvious. Post-secondary education is a key component of a national labour market strategy. Changes in technology, economic concentration, and global economic arrangements have created important choices for national governments in all countries. They can opt for a low-wage, high-unemployment strategy, or for a high-wage, high-productivity policy based on human resources and expanded research and development. The second approach is the one that holds out the promise of a robust, prosperous and equitable economy.
Post-secondary institutions are centres of learning and personal development. They are engines of research, labour market training and regional development. They are also major employers in their regions, and as a result have a significant impact on local and regional economies, as well as the national economy.
It is the federal government’s role to provide the leadership in ensuring that Canadians are able to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to function effectively in a rapidly changing economic environment.
We would recommend that the federal role be outlined in a Higher Education Act. This Act could define a central role for the federal government in financing post-secondary education, according to national principles or standards, such as those outlined above.
One need only look at the CHST experience to understand how important federal spending is for the provision of adequate, let along high quality, social programs.
When the CHST was announced, CUPE predicted that provinces would respond by cutting transfers to post-secondary institutions. We knew the result would be higher tuition fees, more private sector funding and influence on campus, and drastic cuts to student services. Unfortunately, these predictions have come true. The federal government cannot deny responsibility for declining quality in the system.
While use of the federal spending power has come under criticism from provinces wishing for the freedom to cut social programs, it is still the only tried and true enforcement mechanism to ensure national standards or principles. As such, the federal government should not shy away from using it to protect programs that are important to Canadians, especially programs like post-secondary education that enhance equality of opportunity among Canadians.
Making post-secondary education affordable for students
All qualified Canadians should be entitled to access to high quality, affordable post-secondary education. In recent years, cuts to student aid and elimination of grants have combined with rapidly increasing costs to produce a financial crisis for many students.
Governments openly admit to passing the cost of post-secondary education from their balance sheets to the wallets of individual students and their families. This policy is based on an ideology of individualism: since individuals benefit from post-secondary education, they should also pay for it.
We would argue that colleges and universities benefit society as a whole as much as they do the individual. Individuals with a degree or diploma are more likely to participate in the labour force and pay taxes. With higher earnings, they are more likely to participate in the economy. They are also less likely to draw on programs like unemployment insurance and social assistance. Their higher earnings even mean that they’re healthier, and draw less on public health care.
Rising tuition fees continue to be a significant contributor to inflation. To make up for government funding cuts, university tuition fees jumped by an average 11.8% in September 1996, with fees at Ontario universities raised by an average of 20%. More graduates are carrying unmanageable debt burdens when they leave school and enter an unpromising labour market.
A public program of student assistance is the only way to ensure that the needs of students come before the profit margins of banks. Likewise, a national system is needed to ensure that students have the assistance they need wherever they need or choose to study in the country.
It is helpful for students to have access to adequate loans at reasonable rates. However, there is also a need to move back towards a grant-based system of student assistance. This is especially necessary if we want to increase participation of wequality seeking groups in post-secondary education.
Lifelong learning should not equal lifelong debt. CUPE stands opposed to income contingent loan repayment plans (ICLRPs) as a way to reform student assistance. ICLRPs have been proposed primarily as a way for graduates to cope with the inevitably higher personal debt load that will result from elimination of public funding of post-secondary education.
We see ICLRPs as a trendy (with certain governments) way to try to get students to accept the higher price they have to pay to make up for funding cuts. It does not surprise us that ICLRPs are especially popular with university presidents, who see them as a way to bring in huge tuition increases, and with right wing economists who advocate the prvatization of post-secondary education.
With ICLRPs, debt aversion will discourage many from pursuing post-secondary education. Lower income students, and those who traditionally earn less – women, people of colour, people with a disability, – will know that they will have to pay more for their education than their more privileged counterparts – those who don’t need to take out a loan or those who can pay it off quickly.
Proponents of ICLRPs like to claim that program criteria (for example, income threshold, interest rates, forgiveness measures) can be set in such a way that they would be “fair” to students. The fact is, in Canada, governments are only considering ICLRPs as a way to save money. This approach guarantees that the program criteria will be chosen with a view to increasing costs to students. Decades of growth in attendance of under-represented groups could be reversed, as happened in New Zealand when higher fees accompanied the introduction of ICLRPs.
The importance of a public system
These days, there seems to be little debate about the importance of post-secondary education. Studies have linked employment and earnings prospects to level of education attained, shown that new jobs will increasingly require higher levels of education, and that Canada’s educated workforce is one of its greatest resources.
The debate now is about whether a privatized system can provide the kind of results needed by both students and the broader Canadian society. Part of the debate is about who should get to go to college or university.
It is CUPE’s position that high quality post-secondary education needs to be accessible to all qualified Canadians, and not just those rich enough to afford much higher tuition fees.
The needs of students and of the country as a whole will be best met by a public system of post-secondary education – one that is publicly funded and publicly delivered. Public funding of post-secondary institutons is essential to ensuring they serve a wide range of public interests and that educational priorities are set by public policy to meet the needs of the entire community. As well, government is the only body able to take responsibility for ensuring national standards and principles for post-secondary education across the country. Public funding of post-secondary education is an investment in the future of our country, one for which the return is vastly greater than the expense.
The alternative to a publicly funded and delivered system of higher education is one ruled by supply and demand. Under a privatized system, quality, accessibility and accountability would all suffer.
Is a public system affordable?
Public post-secondary education should be seen as a spending priority for the federal government. Last year’s Alternative Federal Budget (produced by a representative coalition of organizations and economists) included restored and increased federal spending on post-secondary education, a national system of grants to help students cope with the rising costs of tuition, books and other expenses, and increased funding for First Nations education. These measures were financed through tax reform and a strategy to enhance economic growth. The coalition will produce another Alternative Budget this year; again, public post-secondary education will be part of the alternative put forward.
Quality
A public system is the only way to ensure the kind of education that will provide Canada with an informed electorate, community leaders, professionals, artists, a transfer of knowledge into the economy, developments in research and development, and a caring community where each member contributes to his or her fullest ability.Currently, fiscal restraint is leading many institutions to seek higher levels of corporate support to fund their activities. Corporations are eager to help – getting involved in post-secondary institutions can provide them with highly skilled and innovative researchers, quality research laboratories, a large pool of students who are potential consumers, consultancy and training contracts, access to technology and the post-secondary network of contacts, exclusive rights to campus markets, and/or improved public relations. For universities and colleges, on the other hand, the driving motivation is most often financial need.
Increasing dependence on corporate support affects the quality of the education offered. Courses are being offered because of corporate priorities, rather than the priorities of the broader community or students. Profitability is becoming the yardstick by which institutions are restructuring and streamling programs and courses in response to cuts. Faculty are being expected to show entrepreneurial skills. Students are being left with fewer choices for courses, with some programs being eliminated completely.
While universities and colleges do need to be efficient and effective, it is not appropriate for faculty to need to be entrepreneurs, administrators to see themselves foremost as corporate managers, and students to be treated like “customers”. Simplistic measures to improve productivity should not take precedence over student service, and cash recovery and profitability should not be considered more important than the quality of education being offered.
Long term predictability of funding allows public institutions to take a long-term, broad view of the education they are providing, and increases the quality and relevance of the education being provided. This kind of predictability is only possible when provided by governments. Private sector interests are more aligned with short-term planning and immediate returns.
Accountability
Accountability is not possible in a privatized system. Recently, there have been several initiatives across the country to enhance accountability. The post-secondary system has been discussing ways to be more responsive to societal need and to ensure representative and open mechanisms for transparent decision making. These positive measures are in serious danger of reversal with growing corporate involvement.
In a privatized system, more decisions become subject to confidentiality clauses in contracts. One example of this is the exclusivity deal struck between Coca Cola and the University of British Columbia. When Coca Cola obtained the right to have only their beverages sold on campus, the student newspaper made several requests for information about the deal. Even a formal Freedom of Information request was denied since the Act allows non-disclosure when the business interests of a party are at stake. The Privacy Commission upheld the ruling. Coke’s business interests outweighed the interests of students and the broader community who were paying for the university in the first place. This is but one small example of barriers to accountability that are appearing on campuses across the country.
CUPE agrees that business is an important part of the community served by a college or university. But they are only one part of that community. Institutions need to be responsive to the needs of the community as a whole, in order to ensure the public support they need for their own survival.
Economic Impact
Another argument for a public system is the economic impact of post-secondary education institutions. Public sector spending is vitally important to the economy. The role that colleges and universities play in the local, regional, provincial and national economy cannot be ignored. They make important contributions to industry, and are often among the largest employers in a region.
The negative impact of closing or cutting back at post-secondary institutions ripples through the whole region, and far outweighs any of the so-called “savings” that might be achieved. A study for the Council of Ontario Universities found that every dollar spent by the Ontario government on Ontario universities generated four dollars of economic activity. The author further estimated that a 20% cut to university grants in 1994 would have saved the provincial government $376 million, but had a total negative economic impact on the Ontario economy of over $1 billion per year.
Conclusion
Canada has the highest rate of participation in post-secondary education for its population of any western country. We have a system that is primarily public. In recent years, we have been making progress to make the system more welcoming for non-traditional students, to enhance portability and to make universities and colleges more accountable to the communities they serve.
Instead of improving accessibility, accountability and quality, we are in danger of going backwards on these issues. The stakes right now are very high.