UG academic staffers want revised workload policy

Jul 14, 2017 News

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Lecturers of the University of Guyana [UG] through their Union, the University of Guyana Senior Staff Association [UGSSA], are calling for a revision of the university’s workload policy.

This call, according to information reaching this publication, has been linked to a protracted accusation that the lecturers have been delinquent in providing students with their grades.
Although current UG Vice Chancellor, Professor Ivelaw Griffith, has also accused the lecturers of being delinquent since taking office last year, UGSSA President, Dr. Jewel Thomas, said that this is a dilemma that predates the appointment of the VC. In fact, she disclosed that the situation, in some cases, has been no fault of lecturers, and in some other cases, has been linked to the lack of resources to get the job done.
But according to Dr. Thomas, a revision of the workload policy could essentially help to address the state of affairs.
“We would like to have a revised workload policy that looks at the realities of the situation in Guyana, and the reality of the situation is that we just don’t have the resources,” said Dr. Thomas.
Supporting his union colleague, President of the University of Guyana Workers Union, Bruce Haynes, said that there is a dire need to examine the workload policy, even as he pointed out that “you can’t bring a First World view of the workload in a Third World university or you will have a problem.”
“Ours is peculiar and it has evolved overtime, but we need to structure those elements of our workload so that we have our own generic workload, because in the other first world universities there is nothing close to what we have….it would have to be put into its proper context, and then we can evaluate how many hours an academic staff really spends per year, and that has been a difficulty,” said Haynes.
Dr. Thomas explained that the existing policy that the university administration has in place was derived from universities that have every resource known to those countries such as teaching assistants, well resourced libraries, among others features.
“The amount of time we spend working as our own support staff, it’s incredible… The university has grown, but we don’t have, in many instances, the support that we should have that would lighten our workload,” said Dr. Thomas, who herself is a lecturer within the Sociology Department of the university.
The workload policy essentially speaks to the hours that a lecturer is expected to give towards lecture sessions during an academic year.
“Depending on how you look at it, you might, for example, decide that a lecturer can teach six or eight courses a year, perhaps four per semester,” said Dr. Thomas, who explained that such hours might be practical in an environment where lecturers are furnished with necessary resources.
Dr. Thomas spoke of lecturers in first world countries who attend to as many as 800 students, but do not have the responsibility for marking. Even without the resources in place, the UGSSA President said, lecturers here have some very large courses with as much as 500 students. “These courses naturally take longer to mark. You cannot expect, given the resources that you are working with, that the marking will be completed within 10 days. Ten days is standard time for a class of 30 or 40 [students] but not enough even if you have three persons marking as is the case in some instances,” said Dr. Thomas.
Dr. Thomas explained further that some lecturers have been forced to submit late grades, simply because of the fact that courses sometimes start late into the semester.
“That is not within our control. If contracts are late in being awarded to lecturers, how can they start teaching, especially if you have part-time lecturers? I can’t say I fault them! Would you start to work if you haven’t been approved to work?” Dr. Thomas questioned.
“Sometimes a course starts a month or two into the semester, so you can honestly expect the lecturers to have grades ready the same time with other lecturers? The grades will naturally be late, sometimes a month delayed,” said Dr. Thomas.
Stressing the unfairness of the accusations levelled against lecturers, Dr. Thomas said, “I can tell you, some lecturers sacrifice and do things that are dangerous to their health in order to complete marking, to give students back their work in reasonable time. They are doing their best in the circumstances,” she asserted.
According to the UGSSA President, too, “I understand the need for grades, but I cannot ask a lecturer to endanger his or her life in the process. The amount of stress involved in that process [marking] is incredible.”
Dr. Thomas said, “We are asked to cut down on mistakes; we are asked to do more scrutiny, but [the administration] don’t give more resources… but [lecturers] have to be more careful.”
“We feel it is defamatory to say that lecturers, across the board, do not care about students and are delinquent in submitting their grades. We have asked the Vice Chancellor repeatedly to stop making these blanket statements that make lecturers and the staff of the university look as if we don’t care about what we do”.
Since the Union is not in the business of promoting deliberate delinquency, Dr. Thomas said that the body has been calling on the administration of the university to produce the evidence. “Since you are saying many lecturers are delinquent, can you please show us where these problems lie? If you don’t want to give us names, that’s alright, just tell us which courses or departments have issues, and we would like to see if we can work to help these persons, because we recognise that it is not good to keep students waiting,” said Dr. Thomas.

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