Policy makers looking for new research talent to take on the biggest problems of today, need look no further than the front of today’s university and college lecture halls. There is an entire generation of trained researchers to whom we have granted PhDs but failed to provide jobs that allow them to conduct research. In the past two decades, universities and colleges have quietly been relying on contract academic teachers — most of whom are stretched too thin by their teaching contract or not supported to do innovative research.
The most immediate challenge — other than the elephant in the room, which is restoring adequate funding to the post-secondary education system — is getting a handle on this changing workforce. On this mark, we simply don’t have sufficient data.
University and college administrators will often invoke the red herring of the “happy moonlighter,” that is, the law firm partner who occasionally teaches a class for fun. The reality is, outside of campus professional schools, contract academics are not happy, they’re not moonlighting and despite wanting to do research, find many roadblocks in their way.
For most, contract teaching is a decades long career cobbled together while hoping for permanent work.
Contractors are reporting mental health struggles, career burnout, years chasing short-term teaching contracts, unable to make life plans beyond the end of a semester, scraping together contracts at different institutions and spending weekdays driving between different colleges and universities. All this, while struggling to do research at their own personal expense (because they do not independently qualify for federal research funding) in the hopes of keeping their CV up-to-date so that they might apply for a permanent position.
Policy makers need data to measure and understand the ranks of our “missing” research talent: contract academic teachers who lack the job security to produce innovative research.
Luckily, the federal government has within hand a tool it can expand to collect better data about the university and college sector’s workforce: Statistics Canada’s University and College Academic Staff System (UCASS) survey.
UCASS has been providing data about academics permanently employed in Canadian universities since the 1930s (despite the name, community colleges have never been included). Along with the Long Form Census, UCASS was axed by the Harper government but brought back in the early days of the Trudeau government. That decision came with a promise to expand the survey to better reflect today’s post-secondary education landscape by including college teaching staff and contract academics and collecting more information about the equity makeup of the workforce.
Among the many benefits of expanding UCASS is that it will provide data to measure whether equity initiatives like the Dimensions program and the Scarborough Charter are truly improving equity, diversity and inclusion in our sector.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers estimates approximately one-in-three academic staff today are on contract appointments. Among those, there are some indications that there are disproportionately more women, racialized people, people with disabilities and other members of other equity deserving groups.
UCASS’ current annual budget is approximately $500,000. Expanding this survey would cost, at most, an initial investment of $2.5 million but give policy makers more comprehensive data for understanding the workforce behind Canadian innovation.
A feasibility study on expansion was recently completed. The next step would be to fund and run a pilot expansion with the aim of expanding UCASS in the next two years to community colleges, to Indigenous and equity deserving groups, and to cover contract staff. Without expanded UCASS data, Canadian policy makers will always have an incomplete picture of the workforce underpinning innovation, and the efficacy of equity, diversity and inclusion programs in the sector.
With a modest injection of funding, policymakers and the public can better understand the academic workforce and put us in a better position to strengthen our ability to solve some of today’s most pressing problems.
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