Opinion: Salaries at B.C.'s small teaching universities aren't competitive — and that shortchanges students

The small teaching universities in B.C. pretty much have the lowest salaries in Canada. According to Statistics Canada, the average salary at B.C.’s four teaching universities is a shade under $114,000, writes Hamish Telford. Photo by RICHARD LAM /PNG

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As students return to class, I’m saddened that one of the very best young professors at my university resigned last week to take a position in Ontario. He’s, in fact, the third person to leave my department of five in the last dozen years.

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The reason for these departures isn’t hard to discern: The small teaching universities in B.C. pretty much have the lowest salaries in Canada. According to Statistics Canada, the average salary at B.C.’s four teaching universities is a shade under $114,000.

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By comparison, the average salary at Mount Royal University in Calgary is $126,850; at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ont., it’s $152,600; and at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax it’s $150,475. Even the University of Cape Breton Island has a higher average salary than any of the small teaching universities in B.C.

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MacEwan University in Edmonton is the only university in Canada with a lower average salary than our small teaching universities, at $109,200.

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But average salaries only tell part of the story. The maximum faculty salary at MacEwan is just under $170,000, whereas at my university it’s a tick below $113,000.

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The salary structure at my university is so flat that the average faculty salary is the maximum salary. In other words, everyone is at the top of the pay scale, and they have nowhere to go except to leave the university.

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The top salary at my university is now barely competitive as an entry level salary. After two years, my recently departed colleague was at the top of the pay scale, earning the same salary as senior colleagues who have worked at the university for two or three decades.

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I understand that some universities will be at the lower end of the salary scale, but they really should be in places with the lowest cost of living, especially housing. The average price for a detached home in Edmonton is half the average price in Abbotsford.

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As Premier Eby noted in his mandate letter to Jessie Sunner, the minister of post-secondary education, we are living in “a profoundly challenging geopolitical environment.” In this context, the future prosperity of the province will depend on our ability to educate and train students to be the most thoughtful and productive generation of citizens.

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But we can’t succeed if we’re unable to recruit and retain top faculty because of our relatively paltry salaries. The current salary mandate of three per cent per year for four years will not get us to where we need to be. We need an entirely new salary framework.

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For one thing, the salary grid at the small teaching universities in B.C. only has 11 steps. Even if a new hire comes in at the bottom, they will be at the top of the scale after 10 years, in a career that typically spans three decades.