A Survey of Sessional Faculty in Ontario Publicly-Funded Universities

Abstract

Within the past decade, the unprecedented growth in non-tenure/tenure track faculty has led to speculation as to the learning environment and learning outcomes for students. Both national media and researchers have raised concerns about the growth in short-term contract faculty, yet there is little evidentiary data to support policy development. Our study of sessional faculty in Ontario’s publicly funded universities provides much needed data and insight into the current pressures, challenges, and adaptations of the rapidly rising number of university instructors who work on short-term contracts, also known as sessional faculty. From 2015 to 2016, our team of researchers reached out to 17 universities in Ontario and were able to conduct this study at 12 institutions across the province. Our team approached each institution or union/faculty association representing sessional instructors and asked them to distribute the survey instrument to all part-time, non-full-time, non-tenure-track instructors by email. The response rates ranged from 16% to 48% by institution, though notably we were sometimes only able to obtain estimates of the total number of questionnaires that were distributed because of email list issues. We reached out to roughly 7814 instructors and achieved an overall response rate of 21.5%. However, due to the lack of demographic data available on the whole population we are unable to determine the representativeness of the respondent population. For example, because this sample represents only those who have worked within the previous few years at the institution and where there is current contact information available to the institution or union/ association representatives, our email invitation may not have reached the full population of contract faculty at each institution. In order to provide clarity and context, qualitative data were obtained through interviews with 52 instructors who volunteered to participate selected from six institutions. The interview data is still being analyzed and will be presented in a subsequent reports and publications.