With the advent of larger cuts at McGill, teaching assistants (TAs) in the Faculty of Arts are expected to experience a 15-20 per cent cut in hourly wages. The Daily spoke with Donald Morard, a third-year PhD student in the History department at McGill, on the details and implications of these cuts for the Arts, and for positions within the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM). Morard has served on the bargaining support committee for AGSEM’s Unit 1, which represents TAs, and is currently on both the hours committee and as the bargaining committee for Unit 3, which represents graders and other academic casuals represented by AGSEM.
Reports of these cuts first circulated in November 2024 when McGill announced that the teaching support budget in the Arts faculty was to be cut by 15-20 per cent, Morard stated. Each department and unit were given their own proposed cut number within that 15-20 per cent range: for example, the History department was directed to cut 17 per cent of its teaching support budget.
The cuts introduced last semester are linked to the larger cuts that the Faculty of Arts has to make in the upcoming fiscal year, as detailed in the Town Hall. When the monthly Faculty of Arts council convened on February 18, Morard described that the Faculty of Arts would face a $3.6 million cut target overall, including funds directed to teaching support.
“The way this will impact TA positions, and graduate students more broadly, will ultimately result in less hours and/or less positions,” Morard said.
Currently, TAs take a 180-hour position during a semester. While each department’s approach to these cuts will vary, the most common moves will be either cutting TA hours — for example, by creating 150-hour shifts — or by moving TAs into different positions, such as graders. Morard underlined how these cuts will not be uniform across the Faculty of Arts, and that individual departments are still in the process of deciding which route to take.
Cuts to TA positions and hourly wages will have drastic impacts on the academic experiences of both graduate and undergraduate students, according to Morard. By reducing reaching support and lowering the budget for the Arts in general, course offerings are expected to decrease. Without TAs, the quality of these course offerings will also be affected, leading to lower educational experiences for both undergraduates and graduates at McGill.
Having been a TA himself, Morard described that being a TA is a valuable experience for many graduate students. This opportunity opens doors to teaching and is beneficial for those who are looking to go into an educational career. On the flip side, TAs help and support undergraduates in a variety of ways. They are a second source of expert knowledge on the course material, and can give students a new perspective on how to approach the concepts taught in their classes.
“An important part of McGill class offerings is having tutorials and conferences, not just lectures,” Morard further explained. “Having a TA allows for conferences, allows for tutorials, and that allows many students who, say, may not thrive in a lecture setting, thrive in small groups or smaller classrooms.” By eliminating TAs, and effectively cutting the number of tutorials or conferences offered to undergraduate students, they are removed from an opportunity to succeed academically.
Additionally, undergraduate students may feel more inclined to reach out to TAs instead of their professors, as TAs are younger and can appear more approachable. Morard noted that many undergraduates appreciate their TAs for having a closer interaction, which is not feasible in larger courses. Lastly, without TAs, professors are expected to take on the responsibilities of grading and will be inclined to offer more robust office hours, which takes away from professors’ ability to engage in their own academic research.
Morard described a few ways in which AGSEM has currently been trying to mitigate the effects of these cuts, primarily in trying to get the university to understand the value of TA labour. Last semester, the union launched their “No More Free Hours” campaign that has encouraged TAs to stick to their hours and prevent doing unpaid work. TAs often work beyond the hours they are paid for due to unpredictable workloads, such as responding to student emails, additional office hours, and extra-long grading. This campaign has been one of their main efforts to emphasize how important TA labor is. In addition, Unit 3 of AGSEM — which encompasses graders, course tutors, undergraduate course assistants, graduate student assistants, graduate teaching fellows, and other academic casuals — began bargaining for better work conditions last semester. These negotiations also seek to make it harder for departments to move Unit 1 employees to Unit 3 in what Morard described earlier as the effort to transition current TAs to graders. Unit 3 workers, while unionized, currently do not have a contract and are waiting on McGill to respond with an intent to bargain.
Overall, these imminent changes in the academic climate at McGill have left Arts TAs with a general sense of anxiety. Morard explained how younger TAs, such as first-year PhD students or Masters students, are increasingly worried about losing these opportunities. For many, these positions are an important source of income amidst rising costs of living in Montreal. The possibility of losing out on hours, or on even obtaining a TA position, has created much uncertainty and anxiety within AGSEM.
“Many TAs feel that they have to work over their hours, and will work over their contract hours […] knowing that they will lose experience or be forced to feel the pressure of possibly having to overwork for less pay,” Morard explained, rooting the overall sense of anxiety for current TAs to these reasons.
These attacks are a continuation of the general trend of disregard for the Arts at McGill. Recent years have seen consistent cuts in funding for the Faculty of Arts that extend beyond TA hours into course offerings. In 2013, McGill removed 100 Arts classes, which led to a reduction in “lower enrollment courses” as Provost Christopher Manfredi (then Dean of Arts) stated, replacing them with larger, broader classes. These larger courses were implemented at the expense of a more intimate class environment, which is what Morard warns will happen with these new rounds of cuts.
“A lot of people like to harp on the Arts and usually they are one of the first faculties — not only at McGill but across Canada and North America more broadly — that gets targeted,” Morard concluded.