Strike Report: It’s Time For The Acadia Administration To Suck It Up and Sign

Jump to Comments

A special thank you to Andrew Biro, the faculty association spokesperson at Acadia University, for his comment on my previous post. 

Here’s the core of it:

Acadia faculty salaries are now 6% below the average in Atlantic Canada, and 20% below the average across the country. If we accepted the administration’s offer, that gap would, at best, be about the same at the end of the contract. We might well fall even further behind. The market for recruiting faculty has become increasingly competitive (as David’s comment about “failed searches” suggests), not only at the entry level, but also as more faculty adopt a free-agent attitude and jump (or are enticed) to other universities mid-career. So the longer and further our compensation package lags behind that of other universities, the harder it will be to get and keep good faculty here, the more the quality of education at Acadia will suffer, and finally, the less value an Acadia degree will hold.

Precisely.  This is really what this strike is all about.  I’ve been drawn into discussions of apples and oranges (non-profs versus profs) but that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter, which is that faculty at Acadia should be paid as well (and receive the same benefits) as faculty everywhere else in Canada.  Period. 

Like every Acadia parent, I want my daughter to earn a degree that is both relevant and respected.  And in order for her to get a top-quality education, her professors at Acadia need to be supported just as fully and enthusiastically as they would be at any other institution.  We need them to WANT to be there, and even more than that, we need them to value the opportunity to teach at Acadia just as much if not more than similar opportunities to teach elsewhere. 

I’m glad to see that students are becoming more involved in this debate.  It’s one thing to take a week off to relax, but it’s another to sit idly by while the university education you (or your parents) are paying for is rendered ridiculous. 

I’ve never been through a college strike before, but as a student who worked three jobs while going to university (and still graduated with thousands of dollars in debt–back in 1982!) I can only imagine how frustrated I would have been if my classes were cancelled and I could add up the hundreds of dollars a week I was wasting while waiting for negotiations to kick in. 

Yes, the faculty at Acadia deserves better.  Yes, students deserve to get the classes they’ve already paid for.

Let’s get this show on the road.  It’s time for the administration to suck it up and sign on the dotted line. 

 Acadia’s future is at stake.

2 Comments

Filed under Acadia University, Canada, Canadian universities, professor strike

Tags: Acadia University, Andrew Biro, Canada, Canadian universities, professor strike