A graduate of Simon Fraser University, James Compton had no intention of becoming an academic.
In fact, he wanted to be a reporter, which he did for a number of years in British Columbia.
But no matter those earlier intentions, the Faculty of Information & Media Studies associate professor has been teaching at The University of Western Ontario for eight years, in both undergraduate and graduate programs.
With research interests including political communication and the political economy of news media and popular culture – that is, the relations among power, wealth, journalism and popular culture – Compton’s work can be found in numerous academic journals including Canadian Journal of Communication, Journalism Studies, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, and UDC Communique.
As he begins his term as The University of Western Ontario Faculty Association (UWOFA) president, his main focus will be on a new collective agreement for the more than 1,700 faculty.
Western News reporter Paul Mayne sat down with Compton to discuss what lies ahead for UWOFA.
Western News: You’re leading UWOFA as it prepares to negotiate a collective agreement with the university. Earlier this year the provincial government passed the Public Sector Compensation Restraint to Protect Public Services Act, for non-collective bargaining employees, but is also expecting those who bargain collectively – such as
UWOFA – to reach agreements of at least two years with no net increase in compensation. How does this affect negotiations?
James Compton: Every year brings its own challenges, so I don’t think my job is any harder than any other president. To correct a factual point, there is no provincial government wage compensation freeze. Bill 16 says specifically employees who bargain collectively are not part of any wage compensation freeze. You need to separate that from the policy.
The Liberal government has said repeatedly that they would like that. It’s a question of moral persuasion. There is no legislation that has been changed and the outlines for collective bargaining remains the same. So there is no guaranteed outcome. It’s a matter of collective bargaining and two parties coming together in good faith to work to achieve an agreement that both sides can feel good about in the end. At the end of the day there is going to be a collective agreement, there always is.
I’m very happy with our negotiating team and I think they’re doing a great job and working extremely hard on our behalf. We will be continuing to get our message forward in various communications with our members about the differences we have with the employer.
WN: How is the state of post-secondary universities today?
JC: I’m the first guy in my family to get a university degree, period. I have a lot of good feelings about the public university system in Canada. I benefited greatly from it and it was one of the reasons I was happy to serve as union president because I understand the public good that is produced out of a university is knowledge, but it is a specific kind of production. It is a result of collegial governance and peer review and these processes have taken centuries to work out. Peer review of research, peer review of teaching – there is constant review of the work that we do. What principally distinguishes it is that; that’s what makes it different.
It’s also what has, over time, been the guarantor of quality and excellence. I really believe in that and I know that our people are working very hard in defending those principles and values of independent research and teaching, and being able to make those decisions on your own and have the kind of collegial peer review of teaching and research. That’s what a lot of current negotiations are about. We know our members across the board agree with that.
WN: Besides the collective agreement, are there issues you want to address through UWOFA?
JC: I never had any ambitions in changing the union. It’s a job where you’re there to serve the needs of the membership, whatever they are at a particular time. Other work is always happening, but right now the principle need is to work hard to get a collective agreement, and so that’s my main concern.
WN: For the last number of years Western has concentrated on increasing graduate enrolment and froze undergraduate enrolment. The university plans on re-evaluating its undergraduate numbers. Is this a positive or negative for the university and, in particular, UWOFA?
JC: Our position would be that you can’t continually increase the number of students and not also increase the number of professors and instructors because quality will suffer as a result. Recruitment and retention is the important issue here and so we believe that if attention isn’t paid to that, then that’s a problem. Across the board, what we’ve seen, not simply here but across North America, is there are fewer and fewer professors, both full and part-time, available to teach.
According to trends in the U.S., which are also here (Canada), more and more of university spending is going towards buildings as opposed to the faculty. A university with a bunch of shiny buildings is not a university. It’s only a university because there are students, and faculty members there to teach them, and to do the research that supports the teaching. It’s about students and faculty, otherwise it’s just a bunch of buildings.
The trend has been towards spending money on new facilities, which are used to create and promote universities that are in competition with one another to attract students, and the branding of the best student experience – which is disconnected from the real value of best student education – only comes from faculty/student interaction. You cannot have one without the other, and that’s what a core of a university is, so you have to support that. If you’re not putting resources into the faculty then your university suffers, quality suffers, excellence suffers; however you want to define it.
If you are going to increase the size of the student cohort you need to match that with the teaching resources to support it. If you don’t, the core function of the university suffers. You don’t do more with less, you do less with less.
WN: You mentioned the significance of research and how important it is to teaching. How is Western in supporting its faculty in that area?
JC: The work that faculty do in research and teaching, requires a longer time-line for the high quality in-depth work. A really good university respects that tempo, bad universities don’t. It means putting resources into instructional teaching and the number of faculty members, it also means respecting and supporting the collegial self-governing and peer review process that maintains the autonomy that’s required to produce that kinds of game changing research.
We have lots of people at Western that are doing that work. Western is a good university. We just need to make sure that we maintain that independence. I am really committed to that. This is beyond politics. It is something that people from across the political spectrum in the academy will support. People have different political views than myself at this university and that’s great, I fully support their right to say that and to do the research. That is their role and no one should mess with that.
WN: Do you see a change in the demographics within UWOFA? Does this affect its role in any way?
JC: I think over time all institutions, and faculty associations being one example, will have to adapt to meet the needs of its members. There has been change over the years and that will be reflected in the concerns that faculty will bring to us.
It used to be the case, for instance, in the past that the professors I was taught by at grad school, most of them – a lot of them – were hired ABD (all but dissertation) and just went straight from grad school into a teaching position, and a lot finished their dissertation after they got the job. That has completely changed now. A lot of people have had first careers before entering the academy, so in that sense I guess I’m not unique, I’m more part of a trend of people starting not necessarily in their 20s or 30s, but starting out having done another career.
WN: When your term as president ends, what do you want to have accomplished?
JC: I want a fair collective agreement. That is one, two and three; it is what we are focused on. It’s not about one individual, I’m simply the spokesperson for the all the people working extremely hard. After that, well, we are already starting preparations for the Librarians and Archivists again because negotiations will begin next year on that. We are in the early stages of creating committees, so that’s already beginning.