TORONTO - The results are in and faculty at Ontario's 24 colleges have accepted what the colleges called their final contract offer.

The colleges said in a statement they are pleased, as it means there will not be a strike.

A spokesman for the colleges said the Ontario Labour Relations Board confirmed Wednesday that a 51.45 per cent majority accepted the offer in a vote held across the province.

Teachers voted in favour of the colleges' contract offer earlier this month, but the union said the vote was too close to call.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents the 9,000 teachers, counsellors and librarians, said a review was needed because the result had a margin of about 200 votes and as many as 300 mail-in ballots remained to be counted.

It also postponed its strike deadline until after the final results, saying that if the contract was ultimately rejected, OPSEU would ask the employer to immediately resume negotiations and, if needed, submit all outstanding issues to binding arbitration.

Lead college negotiator Rachael Donovan said at the time there would be no further negotiations because the colleges had offered all they could afford.

"We are pleased that faculty saw this offer as fair and reasonable and one that they could accept," Donovan said in a statement Wednesday after the results were released.

"We will now have a collective agreement in place and we have avoided a strike. This result is good news for our students, our faculty and our communities."

Union negotiator Ted Montgomery said he was disappointed but not surprised by the result.

He said it was not an endorsement of the offer by the instructors.

"Very few of them thought the contract was a good offer, they just said `We don't want to go on strike this time,"' Montgomery said.

"We haven't given up on the issues, we'll continue to pursue them. Things are going to fester now for 2 1/2 years."

The college's final offer includes a 5.9 per cent salary increase to a maximum of $102,186 by Sept. 1, 2011 -- which is $5,650 more than the previous collective agreement.

The deal was also shortened to three years to address concerns the economic climate may improve, and it enhanced workload protections from the last collective agreement.

Key issues for the union are workload and academic freedom.

Faculty members had given the union a narrow strike mandate of 57 per cent in January even though OPSEU repeatedly spoke against the offer.

In the end, college management asked that the contract be put to the teachers themselves for a vote.