A winning appraisal of massive open online courses (MOOCs) by president Roseann Runte is not sitting well with Carleton’s teaching assistant and contract instructors’ union.
“The savings can accrue rapidly if the course is massively enrolled and subsections are taught by less well-paid individuals . . .” Runte wrote in an opinion piece for the Globe and Mail June 4.
This comment generated backlash from CUPE 4600, the union representing Carleton teaching assistants and contract instructors. CUPE 4600 president James Meades called the piece “frightening.”
He said the “less well-paid individuals” comment is aimed at contract instructors and teaching assistants, and by increasing their employment the university is looking to cut costs without considering the impact on the quality of education.
“These are people that are paid a fraction of what a . . . tenured professor is. In many cases they don’t have things like basic health or dental care. There’s no pensions, there’s no job security—they have to reapply for their jobs term after term,” he said.
Craig McFarlane, a Carleton sociology and anthropology contract instructor, said Runte’s opinion piece is “tone deaf” to the present reality of undergraduate teaching at Carleton.
“Those ‘less well-paid individuals’ are already disproportionately responsible for delivering undergraduate programs,” he said.
McFarlane said while a majority of undergraduate courses at Carleton are taught by contract instructors, they are the “most poorly treated employees on campus.”
He cited a lack of health benefits, a limited number of institutional resources such as offices, computers, and phones on campus, and the need to renew a contract every semester—even for those who have been teaching the same course for years.
McFarlane wrote an opinion piece to the Globe and Mail in response to Runte’s.
“Behind the rhetoric about the brave new world of university education is a dystopia: students who live in their parents’ basements watching pre-recorded and perennially rebroadcast lectures on iPads,” he wrote.
Runte wrote that MOOCs will allow students to adapt lectures to their needs. They would give students the option of taking classes at any time from any university, she wrote.
McFarlane criticised the university for swaying from a report given by an advisory committee to the university’s vice-president (academic) about online learning.
“The report largely focused on developing courses on campus to be delivered regionally,” he said. “The president’s comments on MOOCs seem to be at odds with what is supposed to be the official position of the university.”
Runte said the university does not have an official position on the topic, and said her opinion piece in the Globe was not meant to be Carleton-specific.
“My article was about the use of technology, not about people’s salaries,” she said via email. “It was about the possibilities of the future.”
