The fall semester concluded dramatically with a chaotic faculty town hall meeting.
Provost Matthew Evans and Arts and Science Dean Barbara Crow drew a crowd consisting of Queen’s staff, faculty, and the AMS executive on Dec. 11. The goal of the town hall was to address concerns regarding the projected budget deficit and planned cuts to academic programming.
The University is expected to exhaust its reserve funds by 2025-26, with the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) running out as early as next year if cuts aren’t implemented, Evans contended.
“I’m concerned about adjuncts and other people who [are in a] precarious position, but I’m concerned about the survival of this institution. Unless we sort this out, we will go under,” Evans said during the town hall.
After heated discussion, students stormed the stage at the end of the meeting, carrying signs demanding transparency. Graduate and undergraduate students—including Journal reporters—were barred from attending the town hall in the Biosciences Complex.
READ MORE: Students protest secrecy over cuts to Queen’s Arts and Science outside town hall
Faculty and staff layoffs aren’t planned, but they’re highly probable, Evans explained. The FAS didn’t approve several contract renewals this year, Crow added.
Money is currently not set aside in the budget for employee severances for those who face layoffs. Evans is committed to securing severance packages for employees in the future, if needed.
To prevent FAS from going bankrupt after the exhaustion of its $163 million carry-forward fund next year, a system of cross-faculty subsidization will be implemented. The future of many FAS departments—Evans used the department of classics and archaeology as an example—depends on financial support from other faculties, but there aren’t existing plans for the department’s shutdown.
“A case will have to made [to] the Dean of Medicine, Engineering, and Business, that they’re going to put some of their money to support Classics,” Evans said. “This is when we come to the points about subvention. We have to [say for example], do we as a university value Classics? Are we prepared to put our money into it?”
Attendees continuously raised doubts about transparency regarding the University’s financial standing. Staff and faculty questioned why the University hasn’t dipped into their $600 million accumulated surplus or why senior administrators haven’t taken pay cuts to alleviate the financial strain. Engaging in such discussion isn’t productive, Evans explained in response.
“This conversation doesn’t help. It’s a shame there’s antagonism here,” Evans said. “Do you think it’s straightforward to be here? It isn’t amusing. It is not a laughing matter. This is very serious.”
READ MORE: Provost acknowledges budget cuts in mass email
Other attendees pointed to the Morningstar report, released in May, which declared the University in a strong financial position to deal with budgetary pressures. The report contends the University can endure difficult financial situations without needing to make budget cuts that could impact its core academic mission.
Despite the strong evaluation, Evans argued that based on a recent meeting with all Ontario University principals, six other institutions received similar ratings and are now nearing bankruptcy. Evans didn’t elaborate on the claim.
Queen’s projected operating budget deficit dropped from $62.8 to $48 million as of December. However, the FAS’s position worsened, its deficit growing from $27 to $37 million in the same timeframe, according to Evans. The deficit is largely due to a downturn in international student enrollment, fewer faculty retirements than anticipated, and inflation.
READ MORE: University operating budget deficit lowered from $62.8 to $48 million
The AMS executive stressed the importance of considering the University’s tendency to overestimate its budget deficit.
“There is very clear unrest among faculty, staff, and students on the future of the Faculty of Arts and Science [and], the future of Queen’s University,” team KMV said in a statement to The Journal.
Graduate students who entered the meeting despite being barred questioned the future quality of a Queen’s education. Despite being employed by Queen’s in their capacities as Teaching Assistants (TA), Research Assistants (RA), and Teaching Fellows (TF), the graduate students originally weren’t permitted to ask questions.
“When I’m standing at Fall Preview, telling potential first year students ‘come to Queen’s because we have small classes, because your TAs will care about you, because you’re not just a number, because we have individualized learning opportunities,’ if those are all going to be cut, why should you come to Queen’s?” a graduate student said during the town hall.
Evans maintained future students would have access to excellent programs and faculty despite the cuts.
READ MORE: New policies risk education quality in Arts and Science
Leaked documents revealed the FAS will cut undergraduate courses with less than 10 students next year, and graduate courses with less than five students in 2025-26. Cuts may be overridden at the discretion of the FAS Dean, but no process for this was laid out at the town hall. Adjunct professors will also be terminated, although there is no specific timeline for this process.
A recording and transcript of the town hall were publicized by the advocacy group “Queens Student vs. Cuts” on their Instagram account.
Evans will be attending ASUS Assembly on Jan. 15 and AMS Assembly on Jan. 23 at 6:00 p.m, in Chernoff Hall Auditorium. He will be taking questions from students at both meetings.
Corrections
CLARIFICATION: The headline has been updated to directly quote Provost Matthew Evans from the town hall meeting covered in the story. An amendment was made to the sentence on severance packages to further clarify the Provost’s comments.
The Journal regrets the error
Tags
Arts and science, Budget, deficit, Town Hall
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.
Ross Campbell
Thanks for covering this important news! An obvious solution is to retire all top management and adminstrators (say director level and above, without severance packages as suggested by Principal Evans); and transition the university to a democratically-run co-operative, managed by students, teaching faculty and the technical and operation support staff who actually do the work of keeping the university running.
Charles Ball
Lol. Obviously!
r
power corrupts, democratic or no. that being said queen’s university doesn’t need these shock treatments let the deficit be next gen’s problem and throw a bone to all us suffering liberal arts majors who devote our days to churning out essays for obscure classes only to be told we are not important enough to be allowed to go on like this. they’re also cutting theoretical mathematics. look. evans. buddy. i like neoliberalism just as much as the next guy, so long as he’s a cute guy or whatever, if you let me pick the guy i can assure you i’d like him just fine. anyways, business, stem, sure they’re cool but what’s the one things queen’s students are best at? no, not substance abuse. being hot. frankly we’re a very attractive group. we can leverage this to our advantage. what i’m trying to say is the faculty of arts and science needs a sugar daddy, our very own mr. smith. if there’s a possibility we can make some senile philanthropist a new logo and a new colour scheme and pat his baldy scalp at night in exchange for a few million that’s what we should pivot towards i think. good article tosello
Tom Apostol
I’m with Ross! The administration is a vampire with its teeth deep in neck of the university. It won’t release its bite until the school is limp and lifeless. They pay themselves far more than the people who actually keep the school functioning. Then when they fail to manage the finances of the school, they lay off teachers into a terrible economy without any severance, and then when people question why they won’t take a pay cut they say “it’s a shame there’s antagonism here”?? I wonder why!
James McDonald
This meeting was December 11th and you’re reporting it on January 9th???
Might as well shut it all down now.
t.lo
The link to the Morningstar report mentioned in the article is broken, as the file is no longer (?) available. There is a version on the Wayback Machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20231201031120/https://www.queensu.ca/financialservices/sites/finswww/files/uploaded_files/Publications/Credit%20Rating%20Reports/DBRS/Dominion%20Bond%20Rating%20Service%20Credit%20Rating%20Report%202022.pdf
Denny Boots
Bold comment by the first commenter on this article – but he’s not wrong. VPs making 300k a year who really do nothing to benefit the substantively benefit the institution in any material way. For example, what does the VP UR actually do? What are the success metrics for this role? Where is the ROI?
r
OH GREat you have to moderate these im sorry
Stephen Maksymetz
I’m surprised that an institution like Queens that graduates economists and MBA’s has not been responsible about themselves. They are running a business and have done a poor job. So just like any private sector company performing poorly, it’s time to clean house at the top and implement some austerity measures.
Gord Mcpherson
So does my Bachelor of Arts degree hang on the wall as a worthless piece of colourful paper or a collectors item? Or both?
Alex
First step – cut back the way over inflated faculty salaries. This should be obvious. Also, agree with Ross, retire top management. Doing #1 might deal with #2 anyway.
Greg Sherman
An article which succeeds in being simultaneously upsetting and confusing. The Provost, who showed up in his Darth Vader coat, might have been quoted out of context – several times. The quotes we have are inconsistent, contradictory, and dismissive. I am (unpleasantly) surprised that Queen’s University does not seem to be a cohesive entity. Rather, it resembles a loose confederation of more-or-less independent Departments each with their own resource streams overseen by an administration that relies on goodwill and “jawboning” to effect some degree of financial equability. I mean, why have an Archeology program if it can’t pay for itself?
So who’s minding the store? Who is anticipating changes to foreign student enrollment or inflationary pressures, etc? Why does all this apparently take the administration by surprise? Where’s the forward planning? I don’t see the Provost quoted on this.
Jerry nie
Business school is full of highly reputable professors and experts, some talented students also; The whole house is available to manage the issues.
Arts & science is different story; properly should reconsider where the money leaked into.
When I was in an engineering school, my RA/TA income was the same as a associate sociology professor, my boss explained that I had doubled the profit for the graduate school and that professor was an luxury for social programs.
Unfortunately Canada is free market country and that’s why I have to work instead of on internet the whole day.
Wayne
The top ones don’t want to retire because they’re used to the gravy train and don’t want to give it up!
Time to go.
John Purdy
Queens is not alone in this financial squeeze. Many universities in Canada face the same issues. But in the Google world, and in the minds of the student protestors, everyone is completely and equally competent to run a major organization and volunteers will do better than skilled, experienced professionals. The logical realization from this is that universities and professional education in general are useless and outdated. So what are the students complaining about?
This is is populism at its worst.
Greggore
This is an issue that has been geowing for decades.
University administration levels are far larger and more expensive than they were in the 70’s and 80’s.
There are also many useless programs that could be removed ir merged into existing programs.
Efficiency and expenses have been ignored for to long.
Dwipak Sen
If other universities faces the similar problem then they can also reduce the operating budgets by mandatory retirement of the senior staff and faculty who are already 65 years age, increase the number of teaching hours, recruit younger faculty with excellent academic background. So fewer teachers and staff can deliver the jobs
Jimbo
Interesting, I agree with cutting the non-stem as needed, they’re generally not sought after by foreign students as they aren’t relevant for generating post graduate income. I would take the money from those programs and focus on engineering, actual sciences, (not Poli sci) and medicine. A focus on growth with immigrant students would be advantageous for everyone involved.
Tammie Grant
Go woke , go broke. Alumni aren’t donating anymore.
Sarah
It would be interesting to look into how administration costs have changed over time in relation to costs for academics & students, along the same lines as the other comment. I’ve seen some reporting on it, but not much, and I’m pretty sure if you look into it, there’s a story there. I was quite surprised to see how dire things are. Thank you for your reporting.
Concerned community member
Provost Evans, the Dean reports to you.
The evidence of mismanagement is overwhelming. Over the past six years, Dean Crow has burned through $165 million in carry forward funds, accrued by previous Deans. Dean Crow transformed FAS from a revenue-positive faculty to a revenue-negative faculty, with an annual deficit so large that it threatens the entire university. In spite of her overspending, Dean Crow has failed to enhance the university’s academic reputation, which has dropped precipitously under her leadership. Across Canada, international post secondary enrolments have returned to pre-pandemic levels, but in FAS they have actually dropped to 2016 levels, prior to Dean Crow’s arrival. This did not happen overnight.
Why is it that you continue to have confidence in Dean Crow’s ability to provide effective leadership and good judgment to fix FAS, when all evidence suggests otherwise?
Phil McCrevice
I’m betting gender studies is a leech hanging off of the side of the university. You could do far worse than to jettison that whole department.
John Porter
The world’s most successful businessman who also happened to be awarded an FRS for achievements in Science and Engineering received 2 years education at this institution. Strangely his stellar achievements are never recognized in any university publication seemingly because he is a tad to the right politically certainly of the mainstream academic faculty
Why not swallow hard and ask Elon how to manage it?
Frances Singh
A investigative news outlet should find out how many NDAs the university has had staff and faculty sign over the last six or seven years that accompany massive payouts to staff who were harassed and discriminated against and how many millions in taxpayer money was spent to fire and silence them. Toxic culture at the senior level of leadership!
Greg
Raising tuition fees for domestic students should not be excluded from the discussion.
Duncan
Maybe Queens, should work to attract top students and teachers based on academics, and abilities, not based on skin color, or a WOKE mandate driven by federal policy. perhaps tearing down statues of sir John A Macdonald, taking priority over educating MEN and WOMEN. isnt a good idea. when spending money to install tampons in male washrooms is more important then educating students, clearly the university is out of touch. Your donor base has shrunk, you have a fixation for assuring your students of color get more opportunity upon graduation. Your board of gov. should all be fired
Heather McElroy
Conversation about why administrators have not had pay cuts is not helpful? Are you kidding me? I teach at a small college in the US and we hear the same thing. Colleges and universities are educational institutions first and foremost. Administration has become more and more top heavy, with little contribution to recruiting and retaining students. Administrative cuts should and must be made. Faculty and adjunct cuts should be the last thing considered.
In Defense of Classics
The irony of picking on classics when first and second year classics courses are all jam packed with business, engineering and all other science department students. Maybe funds should be put into each department not by how many are enrolled but take their tuition and put it towards the classes they are actually taking. Also many doctors take Latin when they are in undergraduate to help them remember all the medical terms they will use later. All the people I know with classics degrees are working in engineering firms in archaeology, museums, teachers, information science etc…
Also sidebar for those so laudative about STEM, the engineers coming out of the department are not qualified to do basic engineering work (writing reports, CAD work, cost estimation, project management etc..) and have to go to jobs that are engineer adjacent, but hey keep to the illusion that it’s so much more practical. I’ve seen the work of university students that are doing coop at engineering firms and it is embarrassing. And who is hiring the business degree holders for what they learned in university please enlighten me.
All in all sounds like queens hasn’t anticipated the slowdown in interest in university in general they should have anticipated and budgeted before getting themselves to the brink of destruction.
And for those against taking stem money and putting it into the arts, that is small minded and short sighted. If you’re in uni , even in a stem subject and you’re not taking a non stem course, you’re losing a chance to open up your mind, learn from the past, and, generally, learn how to write and express yourself above a 6th grade level based on the reports I read.
TP
ESG and DIE employees are sucking the finances and academic excellence from the all faculties. This is occurring at many Universities in NA. Only when these woke agendas push a faculty towards bankrupcy will the Univ. act. Not surprisingly, they do not address the root cost of their massive administrative cost increases and fire the equity and inclusion officers, they attack that which actually makes the Univerity an accredited institution, the academics. As Tammy stated, “Go woke, go broke!”
NBB
This is such a racist and privileged comment.
It is attitudes like this that are making universities stale and obsolete.
EDIIAA is essential to moving the way society learns and thinks forward so everyone can benefit and contribute. We would all be the richer for it.
Unfortunately, old white men and most women who like to blame every failing on “woke” initiatives because they have no idea what it is.
Your commentary is the perfect example of why Queen’s and similar institutions are failing. Because people on the board and people making decisions continue to uphold practises that only serve a certain few (read rich white people).
Do better!
Ash J.
I’m a Queen’s alumnus, so is my spouse. We are making a solid household income, somewhere in the half million range. We’ve been called repeatedly by Queen’s to donate. But over the years, even during my degree a decade ago, I’ve seen consistently bloating bureaucracy, unjustifiable salaries, and priorities that seem to place academics as an afterthought. What alumnus could financially support this self-authored disaster? I told them not to call again and that my money would go to one of the other unis I’ve attended.
Richard Anderson
The snake is swallowing its own tail. Bloat, complacency, lack of leadership, and activism are killing my alma mater. Contract, re-focus, kick the DIE initiatives to the curb and rise from the ashes. And quite hiring opportunistic administrators who fiddle while Rome burns!
Ottawa Arts Alumnus
Tammie Grant is right on. Many alumni have washed their hands of Queen’s since the fake indigenous profs were defended by administration and the university dumped Sir John A. We will not send a cent to Queen’s. I am surprised that no one mentioned the sad fate of Laurentian University. Read up on it. Top heavy administration, old faculty refusing to retire, too many buildings and real estate. Low enrolment in arts courses. Time to rationalize, Queen’s. Ross Campbell’s proposed leaderless commune is absurd. He needs to study managerial theory. Leaders matter.
Casual Observer
This is the same situation faced by virtually every uni in Ontario. There are multiple reasons that have all compounded to make the ‘perfect storm’. 1. Tuition was slashed by 10% in 2019 and has been frozen since. 2. Inflationary costs have increased the cost of doing business, but without the ability to raise tuition, there is no way to pay for this. 3. Bill 124 (1% salary increase per year max) was axed and every CBA negotiated had a retroactive pay clause built in. 4. Admin has ballooned to an unsustainable level. 5. Uni’s relied too much on international students, lower enrollment of such is a huge hit. 6. Failing to operate like a business and making tough decisions (space usage and class sizes) because ‘we are an educational institution first and foremost’. It’s time to wake up, the cupboards are bare and propping up less than profitable faculties for no reason than ‘we’re an educational institution’ will come to an end. Get ready for it – The story of Laurentian is about to be repeated across the entire sector.
Jim Adams
Money comes in from tuition, government grants, research and others. Money goes out for utilities, maintenance, staff salaries and faculty salaries. Plus, extra for administration. If you cannot increase the income, you have to reduce expenses…ECON 101 or LOGIC 101.
You cannot refuse to pay the utilities bills and you cannot do maintenance. therefore, you cut salaries. How? Well, usually, universities may have some fat to trim within the staff population. Faculties have all kinds of “managers” managing 2-3 people. They also have too many assistants of assistants so that the manager has time for lots of coffee breaks. Evaluate using logic and reduce.
Faculties hire sessionals to teach courses because many professors do not like teaching. There is no glory in teaching, only in research. Well, sorry folks – universities have a primary function called education. Make every professor responsible teaching 4 courses per year and thus reduce spending money on sessionals. Professors are already paid big bucks so make them work.
Faculties have a Dean and too many Associate and Assistant Deans who draw extra salaries. Do you need all those Deanlets? Reduce!
Stop hiring professors who are duds! There are many around and they have to go because they draw fat salaries doing nothing. Average uni salary is now around $200,000. Imagine the savings.
Get rid of anyone who is 71 years of age and above. There are thousands of professors drawing $200,00-$250,000 per year at that age offering almost nothing. If they teach 5-6 courses and they get stellar student evaluations, let them stay for an extra 2-3 years otherwise, “time to do something else pops”.
Simple things including seriously crazy new programs to satisfy various “claims” and “needs” that have no traction must be axed.
Just do the logical thing. Like you would have done at home.
Richard Anderson
The snake is swallowing its own tail. Bloat, complacency, lack of leadership, and activism are killing my alma mater. Contract, re-focus, kick the DIE initiatives to the curb and rise from the ashes. And quit hiring opportunistic administrators who fiddle while Rome burns!