U of T has instituted a new retirement program in order to encourage what it calls renewal in faculty ranks. The new package offers a year’s salary to members age 60 or older with 10 years of service and supplements an existing program giving faculty members 75 per cent of their salary after 3 years, in addition to the regular retirement program.
“While our existing faculty are, of course, renowned for their research and scholarship, we always need to be recruiting new researchers and scholars to renew our disciplines,” wrote U of T Vice-President and Professor Angela Hildyard in an email. “We are able to engage in some renewal through replacement of faculty retiring under our existing programs. However, following consultation with the deans, it was felt that this was a good time to engage in some more concentrated renewal.”
Altogether, about 500 faculty members are eligible to apply for the new program and the university has committed to begin searches for vacancies within five years. Applications are due at the end of April.
Hildyard denied that the program was intended as a cost-saving measure and also dismissed any suggestion that the university was seeking to downgrade certain departments or units by transferring faculty positions to certain areas. She conceded that there would be some savings in terms of salary differentials between older and younger members but said these would be “marginal.” Older professors generally earn more than newer hires.
“This program is meant to encourage people that are really thinking about retiring, to encourage them to make that decision now,” said George Luste, president of the faculty association. The university initiated talks for the proposed new program with the faculty association in mid-November. Luste said the main point for UTFA’s consent was that the program provides for a kind of universal entitlement as opposed to being distributed on a more discretionary basis.
He also noted that the new program left open the possibility that those who accepted could come back right away as a per-course stipendiary teacher. “I think that’s the administration’s way of ensuring that it will minimize any impact on existing undergraduate and graduate programs.”
