All Posts Tagged With: "Wages"
The new underclass
Why a generation of well-educated Canadians has no future
Melanie Cullins (Chad Hipolito for Maclean's)
Melanie Cullins is no pipe dreamer. She chose a vocation that, by unanimous opinion, represented a path to steady employment—teaching English as a second language to the thousands of immigrants pouring into B.C., a good many of whom, the experts predicted, would be making their way to Victoria, where she grew up and wished to make a home. That was back in the early 2000s, when opportunities for the young and industrious appeared unlimited. A rewarding career seemed within reach for all.
Cullins’s degree in applied linguistics was the gold standard of ESL qualifications. But she graduated in the thick of the 2008 financial meltdown, and the entry-level position she imagined would launch her career never materialized. Governments cut back on language transition programs. Resumés piled up in recruitment offices. Her calls to program directors went unanswered. “For me, that was a huge blow,” she says. “I had almost perfect performance reviews from my practicums, but I couldn’t even get an interview. You start to wonder: what’s wrong with me?”
The million-dollar promise
Your university degree may be worth less than you think
Andrew Vaughan/CP
The message to young people is simple. If you want an extra million dollars, maybe more, just get a university degree. Your lifetime earnings will be at least that much more than those of someone with only a high school education. Or so says the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), quoting the 2006 census.
The university establishment does not lack confidence on this matter. In September 2012, Paul Davidson, president of the AUCC, quoted a more impressive statistic: “While it is true that tuition has increased in recent years, so too has the value of a degree. The income premium of a university degree is large and growing. University graduates will on average earn $1.3 million more during their careers than a high school graduate and $1 million more than a college grad.”
How much should professors make?
In my opinion, they’re paid well enough already.
Photo by ggbaker on Panoramio
More than 1,000 students at Brandon University have signed a petition asking for their tuition money back because of a faculty strike that caused classes to be cancelled since Oct. 12.
But the Brandon University Student’s Union (BUSU), which has collected the signatures, doesn’t blame the professors—who are striking for the second time in three years—for their three weeks of missed classes. BUSU supports the picketing profs. They agree they’re underpaid.
But are Brandon’s professors really underpaid? More importantly—are professors underpaid in general? It’s a question students and taxpayers should ask—they’re the ones who pay the bills.
Brandon University staff are on strike
Sticking point is wages, says professor
Photo by ggbaker on Panoramio
Staff at Brandon University are on strike. They hit the picket lines at 7:30 a.m. this morning.
Negotiations between the Brandon University Faculty Association and the administration ended at 5 a.m., reports CBC News. BUFA represents 240 professors, instructors and librarians.
The university says that classes for roughly 3,000 students are cancelled until at least Oct. 14. Deandra Tousignant, who speaks for the Brandon Students Union, said the faculty association communicated their support of students who cross the picket line for school work.
Jim Forsythe, a professor, told CBC that faculty asked for wage increases of four per cent for each of the next three years, but that the university offered two per cent in year one, two per cent in year two and no rise in year three. Taking into account inflation, the offer amounts to a pay cut, he said.
A recent Statistics Canada study of 27 universities showed that the median salary for associate professors in 2010-11 at Brandon was $95,220. The highest paid associate professors in the study were at York University ($123,959) and the lowest paid were at Vancouver Island University ($82,946). Brandon’s professors were the 20th best paid out of the 27 schools in the study.
BUFA was last on strike in 2008 for 17 days.
Some students find high-paying summer jobs
Click to find out which programs they’re taking
The first-ever detailed analysis of summer jobs in Canada shows that students from some programs are finding high-paying work that will help launch their careers. Others are working low-skilled jobs and barely breaking minimum wage.
Those in math, computer science, engineering and other technical fields are making much more cash than arts and humanities students, according to the CanEd Student Research Panel’s study. And nearly half of them say their jobs are related to their education. Those in engineering and architecture programs are making the most money, averaging $15.62 per hour.
That’s $4 per hour more than arts and humanities students are making. Those students are barely beating Ontario’s minimum wage of $10.25. What’s worse? Two-thirds of them say their jobs have little to do with what they’re studying.
For more, see the post by Joey Berger of Higher Education Strategy Associates on CanadianBusiness.com.
Wages for women rise faster than men
But earnings gap persists, including among degree holders
Women continue to earn less than men but their wages rose at nearly double the pace as men between 2000 and 2008, according to a Statistics Canada report released Thursday. In 2008, average annual earnings for women was $30,100, up 13 per cent from 2,000. For men earnings were $46, 900, an increase of seven per cent. Women with a university degree earned $62,800 compared to women with only high school who earned $20,800. For men with a degree their earnings were $91,800 compared to $40,400 for men with only high school. The difference in wages between men and women is partly explained by the fact that women are less likely to work full-time and when they do work full-time they typically work fewer hours than men.
