"Paying full-price for a second-class university education"

From OCUFA Report, May 24, 2011, Volume 5, Issue 17:

A Laurentian University Faculty Association (LUFA) report warns that students are paying full-price for a second-class university education, thanks to an arrangement where about 1,200 Laurentian students are educated in Simcoe County at Georgian College’s various campuses in Barrie, Orillia, and Owen Sound.

The report says the partnership between Laurentian and Georgian is a way of offering postsecondary education “on the cheap”, emphasizing that the vast majority of Georgian-based faculty are low-paid contract academic staff who have to share offices, in one instance with up to 17 others.

Students, moreover, agreed with the faculty association’s critique that many of the college’s professors have crushing workloads, lack job security, and cannot voice dissenting opinions while working at the college site.

Students studying at Georgian also say that while they pay close to $800 more in tuition than college students, they have an inadequate library, few extra-curricular options, and face administration resistance when they try to form a student union.

Last week Georgian signed an agreement with Laurentian based on a memorandum of settlement negotiated between Laurentian and LUFA, signed December 2009, whereby Georgian now accepts that LUFA members have academic freedom. But still...no private offices.