New policies risk education quality in Arts and Science

Students are being kept in the dark about policies being implemented for the next two academic years.

Due to Queen’s current financial deficit, the Office of the Provost is introducing policies eliminating small course sections within the Faculty of Arts and Science over the next two years. Under the policy, undergraduate courses must have a minimum enrollment of ten students, and graduate courses require five students, otherwise these courses risk being cut.

The Faculty of Arts and Science is consolidating student support services for distance, undergraduate, and graduate students. The changes to the faculty’s structure are to achieve $27 million in savings over the next two academic years.

The policy is one of many included in a budgetary measures update sent to faculty and staff from the Faculty of Arts and Science, with some changes set for next year, obtained by The Journal. The University hasn’t issued a public statement, or informed students about the upcoming policies.

“Just the scale of the budget cuts are quite extreme. The fact that they’re planning them for next year, without making it public or transparent seems really strange,” Ethan Chilcott, ArtSci ‘24, said in an interview with The Journal.

Queen’s announced new strategies to balance the budget this year including a hiring freeze, and a 1.5 per cent spending cut across the University over the next two academic years.

The University’s operating deficit of $62.8 million is the driving factor behind the budgetary decisions. The University blames the Ontario tuition freeze for the deficit.

Chilcott claimed the University is making permanent decisions cutting classes for a temporary financial crisis.

READ MORE: Queen’s Projects a $62.8 million deficit

“Responding to what is effectively a temporary budget issue with permanent dismantling of programs just seems crazy to me,” Chilcott said.

The timeline of the new policy will allow departments to make the necessary adjustments to timetables, the Office of the Provost wrote in a statement to The Journal.

“Exceptions may be made where there is a pedagogical reason to run a low enrolment course,” the statement read.

The budgetary report included a new policy that aims to reduce the time and completion rates for graduate degrees and increase hiring of teaching fellows to teach undergraduate courses.

“Teaching fellows who are highly educated, they’re working towards their graduate degrees, but they’re not specialists, they haven’t been trained to teach, and it’s effectively using students as guinea pigs to see if they can teach,” Chilcott said.

READ MORE: Queen’s Suspends Fine Art Program admissions

Chilcott worries his department, the Department of Classics and Archaeology, is at risk under the proposed policies, especially since upper year classics courses are more specialized and include fewer students. A fourth-year course teaching Latin and another covering the topography of Athens both currently have 10 students enrolled, according to SOLUS.

“It’s another policy that’s designed to take away autonomy from the departments,” Chilcott said.

For Chilcott, cancellations are already happening. He cited the suspension of Queen’s Bachelor of Fine Arts as an example of the University pushing through unpopular policies in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

Tags

Arts and science, course design, Education, Policy, Teaching

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