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.