News

Several Dalhousie English professors unexpectedly found themselves spearheading an international protest recently. A joke I proposed to point out the problem of high administrative salaries in today’s climate of “austerity” went viral, and we found ourselves on CBC’s “As It Happens,” CTV’s “Alberta Primetime,” “CBC Halifax’s Mainstreet,” CBC’s “World at Six,” among others, and featured in articles in publications such as the New York Times, Inside Higher Ed., Slate.com, MacLean’s Magazine, the UK Times Higher Ed supplement, The Calgary Herald, The Edmonton Journal, and various blog posts around the world.

It started when a friend, who is a seven-years-and-counting sessional teacher at another university, posted the job ad for the University of Alberta’s President/Vice Chancellor’s position, pointing out the $400,000 minimum salary. Facebook banter about splitting the salary between us turned into an idea, and we decided to apply in groups of four. In the end 14 groups applied, with applicants from across Canada and internationally, including such familiar faces as Len Diepeveen, Lyn Bennett, Judith Thompson, Mary Beth MacIsaac, Erin Wunker, Kit Dobson and Archana Rampure.

Across Canada, universities seem to be depending more and more on poorly-paid, insecure, sessional and contract labour, while tuition is sky-rocketing. Our goal was to point out the disparity between the ‘rhetoric of austerity’ that universities such as the University of Alberta use to justify these trends, and the increasing costs of administrative salaries and the size of university administrations.

Many of us here in the English department are concerned by these trends, which see core teaching areas and traditional fields such as the humanities losing out in the funding game to more peripheral areas often seemingly driven by corporate priorities and agendas. We hope that Dal English students and alumni who are equally concerned by the direction Canadian post-secondary education is heading in, who want to see our excellent undergraduate students taught by tenured professors with academic freedom and stable working conditions, will let their alumni and development offices know these priorities when they get the ‘give us money’ telephone calls.

We didn’t get the job.