Retirement News : Seniors : Stop fear-mongering on retirement

Stop fear-mongering on retirement

Date Added: 22-03-2005

With Canada's baby boomers set to start retiring this decade, Ontario's universities are staring a faculty shortage crisis square in the face.

If we don't do more to recruit new professors and keep the ones we have, we will be competing with universities in English-speaking nations working to avert similar shortages.

So you would think the University of Toronto's decision to end mandatory retirement would be welcome news to senior university administrators across Ontario who understand the benefits of planning ahead.

On the contrary, some have warned the end of mandatory retirement could block new academics from getting jobs or prevent universities from meeting equity requirements.

Such claims reflect fear-mongering at worst, outdated thinking at best.

A study published in the Canadian Journal of Economics last August demonstrated that eliminating mandatory retirement in Manitoba and Quebec had little impact on age of retirement.

In general, professors working in Canadian universities who don't have mandatory retirement tend to wrap things up around age 62 or 63.

In Quebec, where mandatory retirement was abolished in the mid-1980s, fewer than 2 per cent of professors are over the age of 65.

At Concordia University, only a dozen faculty out of 800 (1.5 per cent) are over 65. At l'Université du Québec à Montréal, there are only 13 faculty out of 934 (1.4 per cent) over the age of 65.

Clearly, the sky has not fallen on those jurisdictions.

In fact, the future looks quite bright for new faculty hoping to find jobs in Ontario universities.

Former Premier Bob Rae, in his recent report, says they need to hire 11,000 new faculty by 2010.

Mandatory retirement can only worsen the critical shortage of faculty we are facing in Ontario.

Currently one-third of faculty members in Ontario are between the ages of 55 and 64; 30 per cent will retire within this decade.

The government predicts enrolment in Ontario universities will increase by 20 per cent over the same time frame.

The problem isn't that there are too many old professors blocking the way for young ones. It's that there aren't enough young academics to fill the shortage gap. Rae says Ontario needs to double graduate enrolment to avert a faculty shortage crisis. We agree.

We need to keep senior faculty to mentor junior faculty and to supervise the swelling ranks of graduate students. Allowing professors to work past 65 draws on the best of both worlds.

To those senior administrators who suggest it will cost universities too much to keep older professors on, it's time to stop fear-mongering.

The recent settlement between the University of Toronto and its faculty association on mandatory retirement has made it clear the issue isn't about the cost of keeping faculty on past 65 — it's about the cost of losing good faculty in their prime.

The U of T settlement also lays to rest another red herring: the claim that universities will require a long implementation period when the Ontario government makes good on its promise to pass legislation ending mandatory retirement.

In fact, the largest university in the country has rejected these arguments. It's obvious from the U of T agreement that, once legislation is passed, the parties involved are fully capable of working out any necessary adjustments.

It is long past time for the Ontario government to table legislation outlawing mandatory retirement. It's a win-win situation, for academics young and old.

As for senior university administrators, instead of fear-mongering on mandatory retirement why don't we focus on the biggest obstacle to hiring new faculty — the lack of provincial government funding for education.

Rae says Queen's Park needs to increase provincial base spending by at least $1.3 billion, starting with budget 2005. That is where our focus should be trained.

For More Information: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1111186209265&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795