Budget Cuts: How You Can Help
The town halls and consultation led by Provost Anthony C. Masi are aimed at gathering ideas from the community on how to address the imposed cuts. The message from the Provost is that we, together as the McGill community, need to strategize to be responsible, in case nothing changes; but he also invited the community to get involved and speak out against the cuts. We have seen that in the case of research funding, with enough noise, the government will listen.
Many people at McGill have been asking how they can help to fight the cuts. Here are some suggestions for you to make your opinion known:
- Write or phone the Premier of Quebec, the Minister of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology, and your Member of the National Assembly of Quebec to express your views. A list of contacts can be found here.
- Participate in the online debate through the Government’s social media pages, such as the Facebook page for the Summit on Higher Education and the Ministry’s Twitter feed.
- Debate the issue with your family, circle of friends, or business contacts, and encourage them to contact the Government as well.
- Comment on the issue online in McGill’s student newspapers, the Reporter, here on the Red blog, and in Quebec media.
- If you are a student, talk to the chair of your department, the dean of your faculty and McGill student associations about the actions and positions they are taking.
- Make your views known to the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) and the Table de concertation étudiante du Québec (TaCEQ).
- If you are a staff member and belong to an employee group, make your views known to them, and to any provincial or national associations to which the McGill group is affiliated. Talk to your chair, dean or unit head.
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I am worried and keen to know how these cuts will directly affect my education as an undergraduate student.
If you gave us a draft/sample letter in French, this might also help us to get through more effectively to the province.
Letter writing campaigns often provide sample letters, and it makes it easier to mobilize people.
Thanks!
I agree with the suggestion of sample letters. We could also use some research data about the economic benefits of funding universities, since that seems to be the Government’s sole criteria.
Anne
Je suis completement acable-Ca nous a pris 40 ans de sortir des annees noires ombrees par l’eglise et un gouvernement archi-authoritaire pour d’arriver a un point dont nos institutions academiques font parti des meilleurs au monde…et 6 mois pour defaire tout ce qu’on a accompli-Bravo Pauline, mais vraiment Bravo!
On sera oblige d’accepter la mediocrite a partir de cette annee si le gouvernement continue a diriger de cette facon sans vision de l’avenir.
I realize this has been a successful dossier but given the urgency of the budget cuts it would be to put a freeze on the hiring of a new Deputy Provost Student Life and Learning. Life will be harder without this position but given the choice between cuts like this vs ones that have a direct impact on teaching and research it would be the right thing to do.
A sample letter is a good idea. We’ll look into that. Stay tuned.
I second this suggestion. The tasks could be divided among other Provosts.
As a follow-up on a sample letter, perhaps a petition (in french and english) might be extremely helpful. We were able to get over 10,000 signatures on the petition that was presented to the Premier and the provincial funding agencies to protest the cuts to research. A letter was presented to the Premier and sent to the press. This was partially effective in reducing the cuts. The petition could be signed by all the majors university adminsstrators and union leaders (students and otherwise). Time is short but with the available listservers and focused contacts, it could be very effective.
How about closing the university for 2 weeks in the summer and imposing an across-the-board 5% pay cut? As others have noted, whatever we do must be visible and symbolic and this is something that would indeed be noticed. I can’t speak for the rest of the community but I would prefer this type of sacrifice over the prospects of losing people.
These are measures which ALL universities in Canada should adopt:
Take a close look at the economic situation and act accordingly.
1. Reduce the number of students, especially in the Social Sciences (saturated market!) – develop Sciences, engineering, Medicine etc. with an accent on innovation!
2. Introduce anonymous examinations for admission into all programs and be stricter when you grade students during the academic years (this should go back to grade 1; still, universities can start the trend, elementary teachers’ unions and school boards are hopeless, not to mention provincial Ministries of Education).
3. Reduce number of professors – preferably keep those who can teach. Research can be complementary.
4. Reduce admin and support staff appropriately.
You’ll be surprised how efficient you’ll be in no time.
We are being asked for suggestions, ideas, and proposals on the looming budget crisis. Thank you, Provost Masi for this opportunity.
As you turn over every stone to find ‘the right path’ to take, please don’t forget to look under that stone you stand on.
I don’t have a picture of the present senior administration but if one can imagine the Principal at top of the pyramid, let’s look below.
There is a Provost, a Deputy Provost and two Assistant Provosts, and then at least seven Vice-Principals. Many of these VP’s have Assistant or Associate VP’s to help them.
Under the Vice Principals, there are the Deans and again many of the Deans have Assistant or Associate Deans to help them.
Each of the above has large ‘offices’ with more senior administrators to help them. Please check out the links below for more details. For example,
http://www.mcgill.ca/provost/people
http://www.mcgill.ca/studentlifeandlearning/deputyprovost
http://www.mcgill.ca/about/administration
Each of these positions listed above has staff; some have so many staff that a position called Chief of Staff is needed just to supervise all the senior management work being done.
Underneath the Senior Administration there are about 1500 middle managers in the University to do “the heavy lifting.”
Now I’ve been here too long. I do remember David Johnston (I haven’t burnt all my brain cells, yet). Principals Johnston started with six Vice Principals but in the financially difficult 1980’s, when Dr. Yaffe (VP Administration) retired, he was not replaced and Mr John Armour, became VP Finance and Administration to save money. Principal Johnston worked for almost ten years with only 5 VP’s in his senior administration before reaching the dean level.
During that time period I was President of MUNASA which ‘represented’ all non-unionized Non-Academic staff. About 2300 at the time, of which 1700 were C’s, T’s and L’s and there about 500 M’s (managers).
Today the 1700 have unionized (MUNACA) and now there are about 1500 managers.
During Principal Johnston’s time there were not that many more students than there is now and McGill was still highly regarded in the world.
There is more, but I’ll stop now. Hopefully, my point is made.
Yes, there will be cuts…but the butcher only cuts himself by accident.
allan youster
Ps. One wonders at what the new principal will be like…a leader with a hands on approach or someone who’s good a running a large bureaucracy, but never really gets in touch with our University.
I’m hoping for the best.
It seems the OQLF has $24 million they’re not using for anything useful, perhaps you should ask them for some of their money?
We were asked for suggestions that could change out financial crises. How about Banner? I was working at the same time as a manager for two labs before Banner existed. Everything worked just fine. We were using Credit cards, ordering by phone and dealing with all the orders, receiving the orders and filing all the invoices by ourselves. In a very short time I was able to make an order, follow all the requirements for the order, make a note of the delivery day and file the invoice in my ordering book. We were all (professors, students and manager) able to find every required information about the order in no time. Now we have to deal with this useless, confusing and actually more administration requiring system. It is definitely not a laboratory user friendly system but designed more for the management. Just think about the time you have to spend if there is a problem with the unpaid invoice. Laboratory managers still have to deal with the merchant, but on the top of it also with the people from accounting, prolonging the amount of time we have to spend on the issue. Why did we purchase Banner and build all this huge administrative infrastructure behind it?
Given that the PQ does not seem to value higher education, why not close the Department of Langue et littérature françaises?
Si j’exprimais mes idéaux, ce ne serait sûrement pas pour vous aider.
Monsieur Masi – dont le poste ne m’apparaît pas très clair – invite la communité McGilloise à s’imposer aux compressisons budgétaires en – par exemple – écrivant à la première ministre. Avec le salaire payé à M. Masi, je crois bien qu’il est capable de lui écrire lui-même. Il est vrai que lorsqu’un grand nombre de personnes s’unissent pour une même cause, cela devient une force extraordinaire et considérable dont on a eu l’expérience ce printemps dernier, mais dans ce cas l’utilité de M. Masi – et de plusieurs personnes à l’administration mcGilloise – m’apparaît superflue, comme M. Allan Youster l’a déjà fait remarqué ci-haut.
Bien que n’étant pas complètement d’accord avec le gouvernement sur cette question, je ne crois pas qu’il soit complètement de mauvaise foi. S’il fait des coupures, c’est qu’il y a une raison, et cette raison est qu’on manque d’argent pour tout et qu’il faut prioriser. Dans ce cas, il faut se serrer la ceinture et nous-mêmes prioriser : par exemple, si la recherche est plus importante que l’administration, on sait où couper. “symbolic gesture” propose (sûrement dans sa frustration personnelle contre le PQ) de fermer le Département de Langue et littérature françaises (ce que je considère une offense pour tous les francophones de McGill). Avant de paniquer et de commencer à se montrer mutuellement du doigt, prenons un pas de recul et patientons : on finira par voir la vérité éclater. Et lorsque ce sera le cas, les véritables coupables paieront – et, selon mon avis, ce ne sont pas les étudiants “sous-gradués”, mais des gens qui en auront amplement les moyens.
P.S. Arrêtez d’envoyer de m’envoyer des courriels à ce sujet chaque deux jours. Je suis écoeurée de la “propagande rectale”.
Since the question of salary freezes or slowdowns in pay increases has been brought up, I would like to suggest a differential approach to this as among the academic and administrative staff there is a wide range of salaries. What I mean is this: currently there is a small raise related to cost of living, and a merit raise related to staff members’ annual reports. These merit raises come in 4 categories (or 5, including no merit and no raise). The 4 categories have often been roughly $1k, $2k, $3k and $4k. I would suggest that these categories be kept as is, but reduced by some percentage that depends on the staff member’s current salary. For example: a staff member whose salary is $75,000 or below will get 100% of their merit raise and cost of living increase. A staff member whose salary is $125,000 or above will get 25% of their merit raise and cost of living increase. Staff members whose salary “s” is in between will get a smoothly varying percentage of their raise, between 100% at $75k and 25% at $125k. Adjust this suggestion as deemed appropriate. But I think if staff are going to be asked to see their salaries grow more slowly than expected, perhaps even more slowly than the cost of living increases, then the impact of this reduction in real wages should be borne in greater proportion by those fortunate enough to already earn higher salaries, who have in most cases profited from McGill’s “years of plenty” (tongue-in-cheek – those years were only plentiful in comparison to the current crisis)
In light of the most recent email to the McGill staff, I would like to propose the following to again, attempt to salvage jobs within our community.
Much like the Voluntary Retirement program, why not offer a similiar program to the “younger” McGill employees? A “severance” package if you will of 1 year to 6 months salary depending on the employee’s years of service.
Realistically,the younger generation have the oppurtunity and ability to look at other career choices and perhaps use the money toward debt payment, returning to school, etc….