An article in yesterday’s Globe and Mail titled Wanted: a great many professors reports on the need for professors in Ontario. The article by Caroline Alphonso (Tuesday, April 12, 2005, Page A12) reports on a OCUFA study, Closing the Quality Gap which argues for the need for hiring 11,000 faculty by 2010.
Ontario’s universities have the worst student-faculty ratio in the country and unless the provincial government allocates millions of dollars to hire professors, students will receive a second-rate education, warns a new report.
The report released yesterday by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations shows that Ontario’s universities have an average ratio of 24 students to each professor, well above the Canadian average ratio of 18 to 1.
With a large number of professors retiring and more students enrolling in universities, the student-faculty gap is about to get worse, the report says. Class sizes of more than 100 first-year students are not uncommon. Some schools have classes of more than 500 students, making it impossible for students to interact with their professors.