The University of Toronto has reached a deal with its faculty association that will end mandatory retirement for professors and librarians. This is an overdue correction to an unfair arbitrary firing process that has already been abolished in five provinces, as well as the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.

Professors, on par with MDs, face one of the longest and most rigorous pre-career training processes in our society. A young PhD just out of grad school, or fresh off a post-doc, nowadays is not likely to land a secure job with a decent wage-“tenure-track”-until they are into their 30s. The years that remain in their careers are often not enough to provide them with pensions to live on comfortably in their retirement.

Moreover, we are not talking about very many professors who will stay on after 65. Quebec abolished mandatory retirement in 1983, and today Concordia only has 13 professors older than 65. Why would we want to deny these professors the chance to do what they do best just because they have celebrated their 65th birthday?

Significantly, those who most want to work past 65 are the ones who have attained tenure last: a category heavily populated by women and minorities. In 1992, Professor Olive Dickson took her case against her own forced retirement from the University of Alberta to the Supreme Court of Canada (that included current U of T president Frank Iacobucci). The court upheld her forced retirement.

Thankfully, 2005 should be the last year in which we turn our backs on our most experienced faculty.

But the larger question at stake is the health and future of tenure in our universities. During the 1990s, U of T hired 9 per cent fewer tenure-track professors, while enrolment increased by 14 per cent.

Many are quick to judge that professors have cushy jobs and are a financial burden to society. But if professorships were to be like any other regular job, who knows what such pressures would do to research?

Tenure exists for a reason. The right not to be swayed by the changing tides of the market and academic fashion provides professors with the freedom to think; they should be able to pursue research that openly challenges public opinion, and political authority. This is their job, and they should be allowed to do it without fear of insecurity. We don’t want professors to have to justify the routes they take in their research to any superior person or funding source. The tenured academic is one of the only truly disinterested voices civil society has left. Every disagreement they have with society eventually comes to benefit society as a whole.

So, upon whom do we bestow this essential occupation in our society? Sixty-five year old professors are usually perfectly capable and very experienced in doing their job. Yet young professors are continuously finishing their PhDs and they need a chance to contribute as well.

Universities are under a lot of stress from a persistent lack of funding. But reducing the number of professors in tenured positions eats away at the fundamental reason universities exist as institutions.

Under 30, or over 65-capable educators should be allowed to teach us, to push the limits of what we know.