So, Day 3 of what is being referred to as “Striketoberfest”–the prof strike at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, where one of my daughters is a student–has ended with crossed arms and pursed lips.
Can’t you people figure this out?
Honestly, this thing has been simmering for months and there were all kinds of opportunities to come to an agreement before, say, the beginning of school. But then, who would care about a prof strike during summer vacation, right? It just wouldn’t make it on the national (Canadian) news.
Well, it’s on the news now. And after three days of no classes, profs are still picketing, students are bringing refreshments, and RAs are trying to come up with activities to keep the half the student population remaining on campus (the others went home for the week) busy.
I have to hand it to the students. The upperclassmen have organized a tutoring schedule to offer help to freshmen who want to keep up with their work. That’s cool.
But, um, as a parent paying for tuition, I have to wonder how long this is going to go on.
I posted before that I was fine with a strike lasting a week. I mean, I like to think of it as a learning experience for my daughter. Pickets, scabs, union meetings, national media attention, endless analysis of the issues….this is all pretty interesting stuff.
I’d be more pissed if I didn’t have a way to handle it. You see, we pay our daughter’s tuition by Visa card. Yep. Air miles, baby. And if this thing goes on and there are, say, two weeks or more of suspended classes, well it’s a simple process to do a chargeback for services not rendered (in this case, a pro-rated chunk of tuition). I’m not kidding. The university says it is not liable for reimbursements due to labor issues. We’ll see what the Visa folks say. Guaranteed refund for services not rendered sounds good to me.
But I don’t want to get snarky. I am hoping for the best for the profs, the students and the university in general. Honestly, I’m not one of those easily riled parents. I love Acadia. Our oldest daughter loved it there and got an outstanding education that prepared her for the Real World in ways that still surprise her. (She’s in NYC getting her master’s in urban health now–at age 21.) And I’m delighted that Daughter #3 is going to Acadia.
For one thing, Acadia is fantastic about accepting transfer credits. This is not very common. Most colleges SAY they will accept transfer credits from other institutions but once you get there, they find some reason to disallow those credits you were counting on when you decided to enroll. Not nice. Acadia comes through each time and I give the admissions folks there high marks for working with students instead of making them jump through ridiculous hoops.
So, I’m a fan. Don’t get me wrong.
And though I don’t know enough about the issues to point fingers, my knee-jerk response is that profs in general tend to live in a bit of an academic bubble and expect salaries that are a lot harder to earn in the Real World (where you don’t have summers off and sabbaticals and teach only 8 hours a week).
Disclosure: My husband and I have been self-employed for years so any time we hear someone talk about the lack of benefits or guaranteed pay raises, well, we sort of roll our eyes. We’ve been paying the self-employed rate (meaning twice the usual) for American health insurance for two decades now. Yes. We’re talking several hundred dollars per month for the most BASIC health care (catastrophic only) and no dental plan whatsoever. We’ve always paid out of pocket for that, so that means it’s $700 a year to get the family’s teeth cleaned. EVERY year. But Michael Moore already covered this–go watch “Sicko”.
Anyway, I hope you can see how we might get a little cranky about people striking over benefits when we’ve never had them. It’s not that I begrudge the profs good dental care–I don’t begrudge ANYONE good dental care. But I’m not sure that I feel the profs’ pain on some of their issues thanks to my own biases. Teaching at a university sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me–and I’m guessing it sounds pretty sweet to most parents as well. Oh, and let’s not forget that nice tuition waiver for the kids of profs. Of course, I could have chosen to work at a university (I used to, actually) so I get that we’re all making our own choices. My point is simply this: most tuition-paying parents (especially the international ones) are not likely to feel sorry for the professors.
So, that’s my little rant. I’m entitled to it. Two self-employed parents putting four daughters through college at the same time get to rant whenever they like. I just made up that rule, and I’m standing by it.
For the record, Acadia is one of the most expensive colleges in Canada. And they even REDUCED tuition costs this year (technically, but it had a lot to do with offering a no-laptop rate instead of only the laptop-included price), for which I give them credit–I mean, who does that?
But even with this relatively high price tag, it doesn’t come close to the costs of a comparable private college in the US. In fact, even with the extra pile we pay for our daughters as ”international” students, the total cost per year is very close to what they’d pay for a year at a state school in Oregon as residents. It used to be a bit cheaper for us when the US dollar was stronger, but even now, when the Canadian and US dollars are about equal, it’s a heckuva deal.
I think there are great people at Acadia who want the best for the institution. So, please. Start talking. Everybody needs to get realistic and reasonable.
The students deserve it–and so do their parents.
Hats off to this site on campus for keeping everyone updated.
1 Comment
October 22, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Dear Ms. Frost:
I’m an alumnus and a faculty member at Acadia. The place is very dear to my heart. But I’d like to correct at least one misconception on your part (and one that seems to persist throughout those who don’t see much inside the University “bubble” as you put it).
University teachers do not work only 8 hours per week and get summers off. For many of us, our contact time with students (i.e., class time) may be as “little” as 9 hours (mine varies from 15 to 28 per week depending on the term) but that is more than made up for in other work, including but not limited to: preparing lectures, grading assignments and essays, doing research, writing research papers, giving talks at conferences, writing grant proposals, etc. My work week is generally not less than 50 hours and often longer. I know that I was in my office for 8 hours on Thanksgiving Monday.
Also, I do not have the summer off. Many of the things listed above happen during the summer months including more classes. I taught a course this past summer.
I am on strike because of my concern for the academic health of my alma mater. This concern actually spreads beyond Acadia to every university campus in Canada. For years, administrative budgets have ballooned while academic budgets have stagnated or worse. At Acadia, the administrative budget has grown by 105% (i.e., more than doubled) in the past 7 years, the academic budget has grown by 34%.
This course of action has weakened Acadia’s ability to attract and retain good faculty. We have lost a number of high calibre people recently and we’ve had far too many “failed searches” for new ones. Failed searches occur when selected candidates have declined to come to Acadia, many of them because they have a better offer elsewhere. Acadia has promoted itself, with good reason, as one of the best, if not THE best, undergraduate universities in the country. But unless we can hire good faculty, faculty who stay at Acadia for more than a term or two, Acadia’s reputation will diminish. Such loss will affect everyone who will graduate (and has graduated) from Acadia.
The current offer from the board (there has been only one, the bits of which the Board shuffles around to present as a “new offer”) would see cutting of faculty positions, increased hiring of part-timers, the continued lack of a dental plan, and many other undesirable elements. The hiring of part time faculty may seem like a good idea but if that habit becomes endemic in this (and/or other institutions) there is precious little incentive for talented people to spend 10+ years of their lives in university earning multiple degrees.
I am in a privileged position. I get to see some of the brightest and best minds of the next generation. I have a role in shaping them. It’s an awe-some (in the old fashioned sense) responsibility, one I take very seriously. But in the final analysis I cannot stand idly by while those who never see a single student in a year would erode the quality of education at Acadia. And, with luck, and letters like this one, I hope to pass on that message. I’m on strike FOR the students and their future.
Sincerely,
David McMullin
P.S. Lest you think I’ve avoided the issue of salaries, I will agree that I’m better paid than many in the so-called real world, but after training for 14 years (to gain 3 degrees) and nearly 15 years of work at Acadia, a salary of under $60,000 is hardly exorbitant. If I’d left university after one or two degrees and got a job in the “real world” (as people are so fond of saying) I suspect I’d be earning a lot more than that.
D.