I am grateful to Russell Wangersky and Robin Whitaker for so succinctly and so starkly drawing our attention to the very serious situation facing Memorial University. To use Robin Whitaker’s words: I am “alarmed by the province’s assault on our only university.”
The government cannot continue cutting the university’s operating budget unless it is content with Memorial’s becoming a third-rate university or destroying it altogether.
I am a graduate of Memorial University College and I was a faculty member of the university for almost 30 years.
I hate to see the university where I taught and which I loved being subjected to the appalling treatment it is now receiving and which, if continued, will destroy it.
I have one suggestion which, given the current situation, should be acted upon as soon as possible: return to mandatory retirement at 65 for faculty members.
Too many faculty members are staying on until their early seventies, amassing even larger salaries and pension benefits and at the same time preventing young doctoral graduates, who would be paid much less because they are junior faculty, from getting jobs. I realize, of course, that this suggestion will be greeted by some with disdain, if not anger.
Morley Hodder
St. John’s
