B.C. Government :
Education Is Not A Priority

B.C. Ranks Dead Last:

 

1983 Increases/Decreases in Government Grants

 

to Education.

 

 

Education costs expressed as a percentage o
_-. personal income are higher in every other prov-

 

ince.

Newfoundland
Quebec ;
Prince Edward Island
Nova Scotia

New Brunswick
Saskatchewan

British Columbia

Do the people of B.C. deserve less of a
commitment from us than the people of other
provinces? Will our people of other provinc-
es? Will our people be equipped to compete
in the future?

Source: Statistics Canada Catalogue 81-208

 

12.3%
11.6%
11.3%
10.4%
10.2%
9.2%
9.1%
8.7%
8.6%
7.6%

Source:

The Longest Fourteen Hours

On January 3, 1983 the Minister of Education
gepcated on the Jack Webster show and made the
following statement:‘'... an academic instructor
would work on average 14 hours per week ...’’
What follows is one instructor’s estimate of how
his ‘14 hour week’’ came about.

I have approximately 100 students (well above
that figure at the beginning of the semester,
then gradually diminishing). Each student gets
two exams during the semester (mid-term and
final) and must cares two assignments: an
essay of approximately 2500 words and either a
book report of approximately 1800 words or a book
review of approximately 1100 words. It is my duty
to attend the monthly Divisional and Department-
al meetings. There are also occasional Disctbling
consultations. My office hours are 120 minutes
per week. Inter-campus travel from class to class
of half an hour length occurs twice a week in
addition to inter-campus travel twice a month
from class to meetings (Divisional and Depart-
mental). It takes approximately half an hour to
gtade an exam, one and a half hours to grade an
essay (content and composition) and half an hour
to grade a report or review. I teach fifteen hours a
week for fourteen weeks and supervise the four
final exams during the examination week. Thus
the calculable time for the seventeen-week semes-
ter Kop the first class to handing in the final
grades) is as follows:

200 exams

200 essays

200 reports & reviews

14 weeks classroom instruction
4 final exams supervision

Se ee ee a ee oe ee a

8 Departmental and Divisional meetings
14 weeks office hours

Discipline consultations .

Inter-campus travel (class to class)
Inter-campus travel (class to meetings)
Total in seventeen weeks:

100 hours
300 hours
100 hours
210 hours
4 hours
16 hours
28 hours
4 hours
14 hours
4 hours
780 hours
This amounts to approximately 46 hours per
week.

In addition to this load there are classroom
ee: oe up exams, and calculating
and entering the final grades. It would be modest
to calculate that work at five hours per week. This
adds up to a total load of 51 hours.

Apart from this there are the professional duties
which are voluntary (in my case for our profes-
ional Association) which also occupy several hours
se week. For professional reading there is thus

dly any time; it must wait until the profession-
al month after the end of the Spring semester
and the summer. There are, because of the mark-
ing of the final exams, hardly any Christmas
holidays. I regard my workload as typical for that
of the average full-time academic instructor.

George Porges
History
Douglas College

New Brunswick
rince Edward Island No Information Available

British Columbia

 

1982 = 100%

No Information Available

108.8%
106%
106%
105%
105%
104.3%
97%
96.3%

Dead Last Again

British Columbia School Trustees As
sociation THE FACTS vol. 78 No. 4.

 

 

 

This publication has been produced by the Action
Committee on Education of the Douglas-
Kwantlen Faculty Association as a special edition
of its newsletter on the occasion of the official
opening of the College, March 18, 1983.