Tuesday, 3 November 2026
Dear colleagues,
Senior administration at OCAD University has circulated three proposed models for academic restructuring and invited faculty feedback. These proposals raise fundamental questions about the future of academic governance, our working conditions, and the kind of university we want OCAD U to be.
OCADFA recognizes that the University faces financial and organizational challenges. However, we must ask a central question: Is OCAD U seeking to create a more effective academic organization, or a less expensive and more administratively centralized one?
These are not necessarily the same thing.
The University’s strategic considerations repeatedly emphasize efficiency, resource optimization, institutional reputation and financial sustainability. These are legitimate concerns, but they cannot be the primary measures of a successful academic institution. By comparison, the evaluative conditions give relatively little explicit attention to faculty autonomy, academic freedom, employment security and democratic governance.
Academic leadership is not the same as managerial control. Effective academic leadership emerges from disciplinary expertise, collegial relationships, shared responsibility and meaningful faculty participation in decisions affecting teaching, research and curriculum. A structure that concentrates decision-making authority in fewer administrative positions may simplify reporting relationships without improving academic quality or accountability.
We are particularly concerned about the following:
- Collegial governance: Will faculty have meaningful authority over academic decisions, or will restructuring concentrate power in administrative leadership? The University’s stated intention not to create new formal decision rights requires closer examination of who will actually exercise existing authority.
- Workload: Will the proposed structures genuinely improve academic support, or will they transfer additional administrative, coordination and service responsibilities onto faculty and academic staff who are already stretched thin?
- Bargaining-unit protections: Prototype B proposes new Department Chair positions that may be classified as management and fall outside the MOA. What responsibilities would these positions assume, and what are the implications for bargaining-unit work and collegial governance?
- Academic integrity: How will the proposed models preserve disciplinary expertise, program identities, studio-based education and the diversity of our pedagogical approaches? Academic programs are communities of knowledge and practice, not simply administrative units to be consolidated.
- Equity: How will restructuring affect different appointment categories, disciplines and programs? Changes presented as administrative efficiencies can have unequal consequences for faculty and academic staff, particularly when existing workloads and resources are already uneven.
- Financial transparency: What evidence demonstrates that these changes will produce meaningful savings or improve educational outcomes? What are the projected costs, staffing implications and academic consequences of each model?
These questions are especially consequential because OCADFA is currently engaged in collective bargaining. The University cannot treat academic restructuring as separate from the negotiated rights, responsibilities and working conditions of faculty and academic staff.
OCADFA is reviewing the proposals against our existing Memorandum of Agreement and seeking guidance from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). We will insist that any restructuring respect our collective agreement and the principles of collegial governance.
We encourage all members to examine the proposals critically and participate in the consultation process. We also ask you to share your concerns with OCADFA, particularly regarding the implications for your programs, workload, academic responsibilities and students.
OCADFA’s participation in consultation does not constitute endorsement of any model or agreement to changes affecting members’ rights and working conditions.
The University’s financial challenges are real, but they cannot be resolved by weakening collegial governance, diminishing academic autonomy or transferring more work onto fewer people.
Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions.
In solidarity,
Min Sook Lee
President, OCADU Faculty Association
Click on the below for the three prototypes: