With the strike by the 9,100 Ontario college teachers, counsellors and librarians now well into its second week and with no end in sight, Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory is calling on Premier Dalton McGuinty to get the two sides back to the bargaining table quickly because "too many students have too much at stake."

McGuinty should act on that advice. With barely one month left in the school year, the 150,000 students at Ontario's 24 community colleges are justifiably worried about completing their courses on time, being adequately prepared for their coming exams and passing their year. Despite the students' fears, there are no talks scheduled to try to end this strike.

Neither McGuinty nor anyone else in the province should take any comfort in the "guarantee" issued yesterday by college presidents that no student will lose the winter semester because of the strike.

Saying details of their so-called Semester Completion Strategy will not be available until next week, the colleges are tacitly admitting they have no plan, which could well mean their guarantee amounts to a willingness simply to drop material from the curriculum and sacrifice standards.

At the same time, it is disheartening to hear union leaders for the striking instructors warn that the mere suggestion that the colleges will guarantee students will not lose their year could prolong the walkout.

The only sure way to ensure students get the education they paid for, as well as their year, is to get the teachers back into the classrooms quickly.

That's why McGuinty cannot afford to remain passive for much longer, simply letting the collective bargaining process take its own course, no matter how long that might take. The pressing timelines the students are up against call for the premier's leadership. Moreover, McGuinty has everything to gain and nothing to lose by getting both sides back to the table.

The teachers insist the key issue for them is not pay. The colleges are offering staff a 12.6 per cent salary increase over four years, which would bring the maximum salary for teachers to $94,277 by April 2009. The strike, teachers say, is over the stand they have taken on improving the quality of education for community college students.

But if that is the case, their complaint should not be with the college administrators, who must rely on Queen's Park for every cent they have to spend. If the government is shortchanging the colleges, the colleges and faculty should be working together to get more funding from Queen's Park instead of battling each other at the students' expense.

And the two sides will not have a better opportunity to make their case than they have right now, just days after Training, Colleges and Universities Minister Chris Bentley announced tuition hikes and new government funding that are supposed to go exclusively to improvements in accessibility and the quality of education at both universities and colleges.

Regrettably, many Ontarians tend to undervalue the education provided by the colleges and the trades that many students plan to enter. If that sentiment is, in fact, reflected in the funding formula for post-secondary education, then the colleges and their teaching staff ought to be making common cause at Queen's Park as opposed to fighting over money that the colleges simply do not have.

In the meantime, their only priority should be to ensure that the students to whom they both are responsible get all the classroom and practical time to which they are entitled.

But if they cannot see that, then McGuinty has the responsibility to keep them talking because right now the quality of the education the students are getting because of the strike rates a zero on any measurement scale.