The corridors of Watson Hall echo with concerns about the broader perception of the validity of a Queen’s degree.
In November, the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) decided it will cut courses with less than 10 undergraduates or five graduate students enroled for two years starting in the 2024-25 academic year.
The budget cuts’ implications continue to be cloudy to the student body.
In response to these challenges, Ethan Chilcott, ArtSci ’24, has been involved with Queen’s U Students vs Cuts (QSVC), a student advocacy group which has been engaging with faculty while organizing protests to raise awareness. The organization aims to keep in communication with faculty, PSAC 901, the AMS, and the SGPS on the ongoing issue.
National news outlets—including The Globe and Mail, Global News, CTV, and The National Post—have reported on Queen’s budget woes after Provost Matthew Evans made comments that Queen’s could “cease to exist.” Since then, r/queensuniversity has been riddled with posts about budget cuts, telling incoming students to beware.
READ MORE: ‘Queen’s could cease to exist if we don’t deal with this issue:’ faculty and staff remain skeptical
Chilcott said the group has spoken to dozens, if not hundreds of students who share the concern that in 10 to 20 years, having a degree from the FAS at Queen’s will be a lot less valuable than it was when they originally accepted their offers.
“The 10-person class size thing isn’t something that affects a ton of departments—but that’s only one of the very many things that are being cut,” said Chilcott.
Exacerbating the situation, Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic) Matthew Evans rescheduled his appearance at AMS Assembly this week—weeks after the meeting was initially scheduled.
The AMS was transparent about the assembly’s agenda right from the start, Chilcott said.
Chilcott and other students are left in the dark, and there’s been no information explaining the exact nature of the budget cuts and the specifics of the process.
“We know we’re in a deficit, and then we kind of anticipate budget cuts. There’s been virtually no formal explanation of what that’s going to look like,” Chilcott said.
The University is handling massive amounts of public money, and they’re simultaneously asking for more, he added. The icing on the cake is they’re not answering questions—they’re refusing to.
The Journal spoke to two department heads in the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) and one student about the budget crisis’ impact on education at Queen’s University.
Glass-Half-Empty: The Department of Classics and Archeology
As Department Head of the Classics and Archaeology department, Professor Daryn Lehoux has been in touch with distressed students for weeks.
One student, visibly distressed, questioned their future amid uncertainty, according to Lehoux.
“Imagine that, as a first-year student. Imagine feeling like that as an 18-year-old,” Lehoux said.
Lehoux’s anger towards the FAS’s abrupt decision to cease classes of under ten students makes him question why he took a job at Queen’s.
“When Dean [Crow] mandated those [class size requirements], she said there could be exceptions for pedagogical purposes,” Lehoux said in an interview with The Journal.
Later in October, Lehoux met with Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) William Nelson and came up with a plan.
“We had some long, hard conversations. It took many hours of meetings to come up with a solution that we thought was pedagogically sound and it involves a sort of rethinking of how we teach Greek and Latin because those courses after first year are all under 10 students,” Lehoux said.
According to Lehoux, this now means the way first-year students are taught must change so they will be ready for second- or third-year courses.
Lehoux said his department will a need a year, or more realistically two, to fine-tune first-year Greek and Latin curricula so students are then ready to enter the new model, something Lehoux said will involve larger courses with students at multiple levels.
“We called it the one-room schoolhouse model,” he said. “We had reassurances from them that this was going to work, and that it was a great solution to a difficult problem.”
On Jan. 16, a significant shift occurred as the plan meticulously crafted and discussed in October was abruptly overturned. According to Lehoux, the carefully devised strategy, which allowed for exceptions and flexibility in class sizes—particularly those under 10 students—was rescinded.
READ MORE: New policies risk education quality in Arts and Sciences
“This is last minute for us and the problem for us is that Greek and Latin as languages are absolutely core to our discipline; they are central to what we do,” Lehoux said.
“Without teaching them and without our students taking them, our students can’t get into graduate schools and we’re no longer a serious research department at this university.”
Lehoux explained Queen’s is one of Canada’s foremost research and teaching institutions, and research at the university level is necessarily specialized.
“Of course, you’re going to have some classes with small students but if you can balance your budget by offering some huge classes that attract tons of students, that’s what we’ve always been doing and that works really well for us,” he added.
The Department of Classics and Archaeology is a financially viable department and isn’t a burden financially on the faculty, Lehoux explained. In fact, the department generates money. For the central faculty offices, this department always has a surplus in their budget.
Lehoux’s concerns also rest in the University’s lack of communication to anxious students.
“I’ve been talking to my students outside of class, and I’ve been asking them how they’re doing and if they have any questions, because no one seems to be answering their questions. The Queen’s communications office has gone silent,” he said.
“There’s this narrative out there that the University is about to shut down—nobody at the University is countering that in the press.”
While defending the humanities and social sciences, Professor Lehoux criticized the University’s tendency to target smaller departments for cost-cutting measures.
“Unfortunately, a lot of Arts programs get the brunt of a lot of these costs, and a lot of these deficits.”
He emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of Classics and Archaeology spans across the humanities and natural sciences. This underscores the vital role such disciplines play in fostering critical thinking and a deeper understanding of human problems, Lehoux said.
As one of the founding departments of Queen’s, going strong since 1842, the Department of Classics and Archeology has published in science, humanities, and art history journals.
“[It’s] because we study literature, we study art, we study physical remains of people, we study artifacts in soil, we have to do soil analysis, we have to do spectroscopy, we have to do all kinds of scientific analysis. We work on Greek and Roman history, North African history, Asian history, we cover the whole gamut there,” Lehoux said.
In a recent Head’s Message on the Current Budget Crisis, Lehoux made clear a university isn’t like a business—education has value all on its own.
“We have always proved strong, resilient, and vibrant; and we’re determined to navigate this crisis and to emerge stronger than ever,” Lehoux wrote in the letter.
He expressed frustration with the University’s disregard for the humanities and warned against the dangers of amalgamating departments. He cited examples from other universities where such mergers resulted in the deterioration of specialized programs.
“They imposed strict course limitations in Greek and Latin at the University of Windsor some years ago and that place is in very great danger of shutting itself down,” Lehoux said. “Now they’re down to just a few faculty and their programs are in grave, grave danger.”
In the face of uncertainty and potential course limitations, Lehoux remains steadfast in his defense of his department, emphasizing the unique and valuable contributions it makes to Queen’s.
“We offer some of the largest courses on campus. We have an Ancient Humour course [CLST 205] that averages 600 students. These are huge courses, and we conduct them so that we can pay for our tiny courses that we want to offer, the handful of them that we need.”
Glass-Half-Full: The Department of Political Studies
Jonathan Rose, professor and Head of the Political Studies department, highlights the department’s renowned faculty—including award-winning researchers and teachers—as playing a crucial role in elevating its reputation among political studies departments nationwide.
Rose is one of six department heads—two in the social sciences, two in the humanities, and two in the natural sciences—in the FAS that sit on the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Budget.
The committee advises the Provost on the development of the budget model, attempting to ensure alignment with Queen’s activity-based budget objectives, recommending transparent incentives for revenue growth, and providing guidance on resource allocation to shared services and unit budgets.
The committee has met over 30 times, once or twice a week since last year.
“It’s our job to create recommendations to bring to the Dean and our colleagues—other department heads—for discussion about the budget cuts,” Rose said.
“For many people—students—these [budget cuts] are new, but it’s actually not,” Rose said.
Rose explained the Board of Trustees, one of three governing bodies at the University responsible for overseeing the University’s finances, directed Evans to achieve a balanced budget by 2026.
In navigating this financial task, Rose underscored the crucial role of clear communication in conveying the faculty’s budgetary details since the approach to achieving this goal is left to the Provost, who has assigned the FAS a specific percentage to work with to balance their budget.
“I think we’ll see a reimagining of some programs. We’ll see perhaps, in some departments, a change in what our major is in of the number of credits,” he added.
According to Rose, Queen’s is an outlier institution in of the credits required for a specific major. He sees this as an opportunity to reconsider the University’s approach to undergraduate education.
For instance, in disciplines like Political Studies, students often exceed the necessary number of courses, placing additional strain on professors within the department.
“Maybe we should be encouraging undergraduate students to take courses within other departments,” he said.
“The second thing is there won’t be, with few exceptions, courses under 10 students—it’s not a universal rule.”
This means in courses, undergraduates may meet with students from other departments, which Rose believes has great pedagogical value.
“In politics, it would be in the fourth year where those courses exist and we can imagine our fourth-year seminars, being with Global Developmental Studies or Sociology students,” Rose said.
One factor regarding this ongoing situation which Rose called “invisible” for the most part to students, is a reconfiguration of istrative duties.
There are front-facing problems regarding the budget cuts, which is what students see, and many of Queen’s have been guided by the principle that these problems are important, Rose explained.
“If you’re in a small department, maybe it makes sense for you to share an undergraduate or graduate assistant system with someone else. If you have a communications person, maybe it makes sense to share a communications person with another department. Same for finance,” Rose said.
Additionally, there are the back-facing issues, encoming the operational aspects of the University. These include expenses for faculty , lab supplies, and various other considerations. According to Rose, these are the issues that often go unnoticed.
“This University is an exceptional one, known nationally for providing an amazing undergraduate experience,” Rose said. “I don’t think that’s going to change.”
The Department Head believes there will be some shifts, but the shifts won’t be evident for the current cohort enrolled at Queen’s. Rose believes the new changes will make a difference in in the way we think about academic disciplines, such as having fewer courses for a major. This will ultimately affect only new students.
“None of the people right now at Queen’s appreciate this, but your younger sister or brother might. Queen’s might be different,” Rose said.
“In politics, we place our students among the very best universities in the world after they graduate from here. Our graduates are leaders in government, the media, corporate Canada, and they learned in Political Studies.”
In his role as Head of the Department of Political Studies, Rose is investigating opportunities for departmental programs, like summer schools, where Queen’s can bring in students from around the world in the summer, as was done with Queens Political Studies Summer Institute (QPSSI).
Rose wishes the government realizes Ontario is a laggard in Canada for ing university students and consequently, Queen’s has had to deal with increasing costs.
“If university students want to be angry, they should be really angry at the provincial government who has declined over the last five years in ing undergraduate students.”
A Student Perspective
For Chilcott, the supposed budget cuts are a school-wide problem. He said in the FAS, these problems are not an “Arts vs. Science” issue, rather the way istration has divided the issue is purposeful on both the Dean’s and Provost’s part—but it’s not representative of the situation.
While the deficit in FAS appears more substantial due to its size, Chilcott emphasizes the impact is proportionally more significant in Commerce.
“Arts and Sciences are large, and the deficit looks three times the size of courses, but Arts and Sciences is six or seven times the size of Commerce,” Chilcott explained.
While the projected budget cuts affect everyone, promoting this at a higher level ruins the narrative of the University having to get rid of “these useless arts classes,” he said.
“The reality is everything is getting gutted, without any real oversight, primarily by the people who put us in this situation in the first place,” Chilcott said.
“[The Faculty of] Arts and Science hasn’t been well managed for several years. It’s sort of last minute trying to save face on the way out the door that is going to permanently damage many of the University’s oldest programs,” he added.
In the DAN School of Drama and Music, the University is increasing music class sizes from three to 10, and shuttering enrolment for 12 music courses. It cut mandatory and elective courses offered to music and non-music majors across all four years of students’ degree programs.
READ MORE: Music school next victim of University’s budget cuts
During the DAN faculty meeting on Jan. 16, faculty had various reactions to the changes, indicating this news was kept under the surface.
“Not having a music department at a large university that has long been sort of famous as a liberal arts college is embarrassing more than anything else,” Chilcott said.
“It’s been announced we’re in a deficit and they anticipate budget cuts, but there’s been virtually no formal explanation of what that’s going to look like. A lot of this stuff we only found out because a memo got posted on [December] Town Hall,” Chilcott said.
Chilcott attributed his initial interest in the Department of Classics and Archeology for its field-work archaeological opportunities, particularly in Europe, with ongoing digs in Sardinia, Rome, northern Macedonia, and Jordan, which isn’t currently running.
“There are very few programs in Canada for archaeology that offer the variety of dig sites that Queen’s does,” Chilcott said.
Chilcott said the changes, including recent decisions affecting various departments, were implemented without proper consultation, leaving department heads in the dark.
Initially, the Dean said there are meant to be exceptions to the course size limit. Now, without consultation, it’s been announced there aren’t going to be any exceptions, except for courses where physical safety is of concern, he added.
This means the Department of Classics and Archeology, which is the oldest continuous running program at Queen’s, ultimately won’t be able to offer classes without significantly changing how the courses operate.
There’s a perception that budget cuts only affect certain classes in the arts field, but the reality is everything is getting gutted without real oversight, he explained.
“They’re putting in sweeping curriculum changes in [the Faculty of] Arts and Science, without going through due processes, without consultations and long-term analysis. It just seems insane, and I am concerned.”
“It’s depressing, especially when you’re in your final years of a program,” he said.
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An art history alum
Encyclopaedia Britannica defines “self fulfilling prophesy” as a, “… process through which an originally false expectation leads to its own confirmation. In a self-fulfilling prophecy an individual’s expectations about another person or entity eventually result in the other person or entity acting in ways that confirm the expectations.”
Way to go, Evans!