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Faculty Count Project Update

2008 Results

Over the past year representatives from the University of Toronto (UofT), and University of British Columbia (UBC) have undertaken a project to develop a more comprehensive and common methodology for counting faculty with the view to developing an approach that could be used by all Canadian universities.

In Canada, the limitations of our national data repository, Statistics Canada, have frequently led the 13 research-intensive universities in Canada (U13) to engage in data projects that address the institutional data needs of their member institutions. In some instances these data projects have later been adopted broadly by institutions across Canada. The faculty data project currently underway is a case in point. Currently, Statistics Canada gathers a count of faculty that is limited to full-time tenure/tenure stream and teaching-stream faculty paid by the University. While this restrictive count of faculty is certainly one measure of an institution’s instructional and research capacity, it is a significant under-statement of a university’s contributing faculty. Moreover, it produces a count that is not comparable to the faculty counts presented by other institutions internationally such as those in the UK which define their faculty complement much more broadly.

Accordingly, in May 2008 the U13 Data Exchange agreed to undertake the development of a more comprehensive and common count of faculty. UofT and UBC led this initial effort and two additional member institutions (Dalhousie and Laval) later agreed to participate in a pilot exercise. Agreement was sought on the following: inclusions/exclusions, categorization sub-groups, and full-time-equivalent adjustments. The table below reflects the progress to date and UofT’s and UBC’s most recent data using the classification and methodology so developed. The methodology has now been tested by four institutions and endorsed by the full U13DE membership for full testing over the next few months.

	University of Toronto--2008 Faculty Count (1, 2 &3)	Full time	Part time	Total	FTE (Est.)
4	Professorial	2,097	163	2,260	2,185
5	Teaching Stream Only	302	130	432	378
6	Term-limited Sessional and Stipediary (charges de cours)	0	1,079	1,079	216
7	Clinical	2,080	1,833	3,913	2,351
8	Other	651	2,056	2,707	1,071
	Total	5,130	5,261	10,391	6,201

	University of British Columbia--2008 Faculty Count (1, 2 &3)	Full time	Part time	Total	FTE (Est.)
4	Professorial	2,253	28	2,281	2,266
5	Teaching Stream Only	251	26	277	266
6	Term-limited Sessional and Stipediary (charges de cours)	122	476	598	280
7	Clinical	4,455	203	4,658	2,142
8	Other	1,540	126	1,666	791
	Total	8,621	859	9,480	5,745
Notes: Includes faculty with active appointments only who are contributing to the teaching and/or research mission of the University regardless of pay source Excludes Research Fellows Excludes Teaching Assistants "Professorial" includes tenure/tenure-stream and other appointed professors (Assistant, Associate, Full) Lecturers, Instructors and other teaching faculty with continuing appointments Casual instructors teaching a course(s) as at September 30, 2008 Clinical faculty contributing to the education of Medical students located at the University and other clinical settings e.g. hospitals Includes Research Associates, other faculty with graduate appointments, and status only appointments FTE Estimate Methodology: For categories where FTE numbers were available they were used. (Includes: Professorial, Teaching Stream, Clinical Appointed, Research Associates) For UofT categories where FTEs were not available a factor of 1.0 was applied to FT and 0.2 applied to PT. For UBC categories where FTEs were not available an average ratio of other U13 institutions was applied.

The following general points should be noted regarding these counts and the calculation of the full-time-equivalents (FTEs). First, these counts capture our faculty engaged to teaching and/or research at the institution regardless of pay source. Therefore, clinical faculty contributing to the education of our students but paid by our teaching hospitals or other clinical settings are included. Second, these counts exclude Research Fellows and Teaching Assistants. While these individuals do contribute to teaching and/or research at the University, they also usually function as students or trainees within the University. Therefore we agree that these counts should be excluded. Third, while actual FTEs are available for most categories, exact information necessary to calculate individualized FTEs is not currently available at either of our institutions in some of the categories (e.g. sessionals and some clinical appointees). Rather than omit FTE information, we have applied a general discounting factor based on reasonable estimates of the contribution of faculty in these types of categories. We believe these estimates are conservative and defensible, and that they provide the necessary groundwork for improved data collection in the future.

For the future, we will aim to make our FTE estimates even more precise and otherwise improve our data sources. Finally, we will continue to make public our progress on this project.