End of Mandatory Retirement Frustrates Canadian Part-time Professors

When Ashley Carver accepted a position as a part-time professor at Saint Mary’s University three years ago, he thought he had entered the profession at the perfect time.

School administrators told him a wave of baby boomers would be retiring within five years and younger professors would have the opportunity to fill openings.

But new legislation introduced by the Nova Scotia government will allow professors to work past retirement age, and this has Mr. Carver and his peers worried full-time opportunities will vanish.

Mr. Carver, 34, teaches two courses in criminology and sociology per semester. He would like to do more but is concerned that won’t be possible.

“When I arrived at Saint Mary’s for my interview, I told them I wanted to get my foot in the door and get into a tenure-track position,” he said in a recent interview. “They showed me a considerable list of professors slated to retire. Now, that list has basically evaporated and those positions just aren’t there anymore.”

Mandatory retirement in post-secondary institutions ends in July 2009 as the province moves to offset a shortage of professors that the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada predicted as baby boomers reached retirement age.

In 2002, the association estimated universities would need to fill 1,809 full-time positions in the Maritimes by 2012, and young, part-time faculty members believed this would be a chance for stable, full-time positions.

But many older professors have said they now will keep their jobs.

Saint Mary’s president Colin Dodds said the economic situation is contributing to their decision. Saint Mary’s offers pension plans in which contributions by the employer are predetermined but not employee benefits, which depend on factors such as the performance of investment funds.

“Professors are concerned with the current market turmoil because it means their pension plans are suffering,” Mr. Dodds said. “As a result, many of our faculty who are reaching retirement age are wanting to stay on and teach longer.”

Peter Halpin, executive director of the Association of Atlantic Universities, said eliminating mandatory retirement will increase operating costs.

“Most of the faculty who are at that age are . . . full professors with tenure, who are earning the biggest salaries,” he said. “These older professors are also more likely to rely on university health plans. It’s projected that because of this, the cost to the universities will be significant.”

There is also concern about development and renewal of university curricula.

“On the one hand, great value is placed on the wisdom of older faculty members, because experience is a great thing,” Mr. Halpin said. “At the same time, though, a university wants to be continually refreshing its faculty so that younger professors with new ideas and approaches have a chance to teach the students.”

Mr. Carver agreed that new ideas are essential.

“My area of expertise is terrorism, for example, and there’s not a lot of the old school criminologists who have done research on terrorism or political violence, so I think with young blood you get a willingness to explore areas that haven’t been looked at before in the university.”

But university administrators believe that older professors will still leave within a few years.

“When we compare our situation with the end of mandatory retirement to what has been the case in Ontario, for example, we believe that professors will only hang on for a couple years past 65,” Mr. Dodds said.