Report focuses on earnings of 44,934 full-time teaching staff
Melissa Sundardas
News Editor
The salaries earned by full-time professors at York University have made the top-ten list among Canadian universities.
According to Statistics Canada’s latest annual report on the salaries of full-time teaching staff at Canadian universities, York’s full-time professors, including deans, have the sixth-highest paying median salaries out of 59 Canadian universities from 2010 to 2011.
The median salary for York professors and deans was $126,664 between 2010 and 2011, the report finds.
“I think it points to the fact that the York University faculty are highly meritorious,” says York University Faculty Association president, Arthur Hilliker. “They have some outstanding faculty members and outstanding programs, and the cost of living is an issue for a university like York because it’s in a high-cost living area.”
Between 2010 and 2011 there were 44,934 full-time teaching staff at Canadian degree granting institutions, the Statistics Canada report says.
The report says at York the minimum salary for faculty members is $82,000 for a full-time professor, $65,000 for an associate professor, $45,000 for an assistant
professor, and $48,000 for a lecturer.
Approximately 70 per cent of the increase in government funding and tuition fees for universities in Ontario between 2004 and 2005 was put towards faculty salary
and benefits, according to the Ontario University Student Alliance’s report, Rising Costs: A Look at Spending at Ontario Universities.
The increased spending on academic salaries was not used to hire additional full-time faculty in order to shrink class sizes, OUSA’s report finds. Additionally, the report reveals that the spending increase on existing faculty has created a greater dependence on temporary or short-term instructors teaching undergraduate students.
The average salary of full-time faculty grew by four per cent annually, while senior administrators’ average salaries grew by 4.5 per cent.
