Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Reports like this have a very bad track record...

but for what it's worth. From the Chronicle.

The job market for Ph.D.'s who want to teach in Canada is hot and will get hotter over the next 10 years, according to the findings of a study that examined faculty trends.

The study, the second in a series called Trends in Higher Education, was conducted by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. According to a report released on Tuesday, the study found not only that universities were expanding but also that they will have to replace half their faculty members because of retirements over the next decade.

That means Canadian universities will need 21,000 new faculty members to replace the retirees, plus 3,600 to 13,600 new professors by 2016 to keep up with projected increases in student enrollment.

"It's a sea change in the hiring market," said Herb O'Heron, the report's author. He pointed out that in the mid-1990s, universities were forced to cut the ranks of full-time faculty members by 10 percent because of budget cutbacks. However, from 1998 to 2004, the universities hired 20,000 new full-time faculty members. In 2006 the number of full-time professors reached 40,800, representing a 21 percent increase over the number in 1998. About a third of the new appointees came from outside of Canada, and half of those were from the United States.

Now administrators at Canada's universities are worried about where they will find additional faculty members and senior researchers because other major democratic countries around the world will also be looking for replacements for retirees. Both Canada and the United States have the smallest proportion of faculty members younger than 40 and the largest proportion of professors over 55.