Teacher salaries in the last 40 years have risen far faster than inflation. Teachers with 10 years experience (which accounts for three-quarters of teachers) are in the 85th percentile among Canadians in salaries. That's hardly a downtrodden and under-appreciated profession.
But salaries aren't the biggest problem. It's the guarantee of pensions that will cause our public finances to crumble. You can't have people retiring a decade before their private-sector counterpart, and then enjoying a comfortable, guaranteed middle-class lifestyle for another 30 years. The Ontario Teachers Pension fund plan (and those of other public sector unions) were set up on models that assumed teachers would be retired for 20 years. But teachers today can expect 32 years of retirement after 27 years on the job. And as the CEO of the pension fund himself
has explained, the math doesn't work any more.
“There is no defined benefits plan ever conceived that you would draw from much longer than you paid in,” he said. “It mathematically doesn’t work.”
From the same article:
The pensions at the highest income levels are worth about 50% more than average teacher salaries around the developed world (not their pensions, their salaries!).
In 1970, there were 10 working teachers in Canada for every retired teacher. In 1990, the ratio was 4:1.
In 2025, the ratio will be 1:1.
These sorts of ratios are looming in public sectors across North America. Fun fact! New York City spends more on police pensions than it does on police salaries.
And that's not even taking into account Canada's aging population, and how we're going to manage the transition from an economy where there are 5 productive working-age citizens for every 1 dependants to an economy where that ratio is 3:1. I'll hazard a guess that we'll bridge that gap with dramatically increased taxes alongside dramatically decreased services. Thanks Boomers!
Why do we need people with two university degrees to teach our kids? I guarantee your parents' teachers didn't have two university degrees, and they presumably ended up with pretty good educations. It wouldn't have even occurred to teachers 40 years ago to compare themselves to lawyers or accountants.
And what kind of degrees are we talking about? Are you suggesting people with degrees in history, English, political science, sociology, anthropology, or psychology have better career options in terms of compensation than becoming a teacher (or professor)?
Canadian teachers are the best compensated in the world. It's a hard job, but so are a lot of jobs.
So any criticism = poisonous vitriol? I'd say there is no more ferociously defensive profession Canada than teachers. You can make comments about doctors, lawyers, bankers, or electricians and you won't hear peep. Make a comment about the compensation of teachers and you get absolutely roasted. It seems teachers want to be regarded as some kind of special, almost sacred calling that is immune to the give and take and criticism that all the rest of us endure.
And in case you think I have something against teachers, I should mention that I think the relentlessly increasing compensation and guaranteed benefits of police and firefighters are also a tremendous threat to public finances and long-term sustainability of public services. Municipalities and counties across Canada are already throwing in the towel over pensions for police and firefighters. The money simply isn't there to do anything but pay the salaries and pensions of these guys who make over $100,000, 'retire' at 55 and then work another job to enjoy the best lifestyle of anyone in their towns. It's an absolute racket, and it's going to collapse within 20 years, leaving everyone else (including younger police and firefighters) with bubkas.
I'm not vilifying unions. They're only doing what they're intended to do, and that's maximizing the compensation for their members. But the notion that interests of public unions are indistinguishable from the interests of Canadians as a whole is ridiculous.
