School is out for more than 150,000 Ontario college students, including more than 15,000 Algonquin College students, after talks broke off between college officials and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

About 9,100 instructors walked off the job at 24 colleges across the province at 12:01 on Tuesday.




On Algonquin College's website, a notice stated that classes are suspended, but campus facilities — including computer labs, libraries and athletic facilities — will remain open. Labs will be closed because of safety risks.

Students will also have access to Blackboard, their online course management tool. Striking instructors, however, will be barred from accessing the program.

Continuing education classes, which are taught by non-unionized staff, will continue in the evening and on weekends.

The union says the key issue is quality of education. It wants improvements to the workload formula to ensure smaller classes, more full-time instructors and more faculty time for students.

It is also seeking pay rates that it says will help colleges attract and keep faculty.

"The issue isn't really a salary issue," said Doug Brandy, president of the local OPSEU chapter. "The issue is an issue of quality education that our students receive and that future students should come to expect in colleges."

College representatives say their offer includes a 12.6 per cent salary increase over four years. That would increase the maximum salary for faculty to more than $94,000 by April 2009 and make them the highest paid college instructors in the country.

They also say there would be no increase in workload, meaning the average teaching time in the classroom would remain at 14 hours per week.

The average class size in Ontario colleges is 28 students.

The key concern of class sizes has been addressed by the hiring of 300 additional faculty members this year, said Rick Miner, president of Seneca College and chair of the committee that represents the colleges' presidents.

The last time Ontario colleges were hit with a teacher's strike was in 1989. It lasted 20 days.