Canadian university faculty getting older, more female compared to 50 years ago: StatCan

Heavy snow falls as a man wearing a face mask to curb the spread of COVID-19 walks on the Simon Fraser University campus, in Burnaby, B.C., Dec. 21, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Canadian university professors are mostly getting older and increasingly more female compared to 50 years ago, a new report from Statistics Canada has found.

Data released by the federal agency on Monday show the median age for full-time academics rose to 51 years in the 2021-22 academic year compared to 38 in 1971-72, with most of it occurring within the first half of that period.

The amount of women in academia more than tripled in that time to 42.1 per cent from 12.7 per cent.

Statistics Canada says with more male professors nearing retirement age the share of women may increase further. However, an aging faculty could slow the promotion of younger academics, the report says.

The information is based on data from 111 public degree-granting institutions, with 47,799 full-time academic teaching staff in 2021-22.

"As the university faculty ages, it will be interesting to examine the impact of retirements on the composition of academic staff," the report says.

"With nearly 5,500 full-time university professors aged 65 years and over and another 6,100 aged 60 to 64 years, nearly one in four (24.2 per cent) is potentially set to leave their job in the coming years."

The StatCan report also finds the proportion of academic staff 40 and younger fell sharply in those 50 years to 14.8 per cent from 57.2 per cent in 1971-72.

"Over time, the job requirements for these positions have changed, and most positions now require a PhD," the report says. "Factoring in the time it takes to obtain this degree potentially increases the age of the population eligible for these positions."

AGE BREAKDOWN

The median age for assistant professors has remained at 40 years for the last decade, an increase of seven years compared to 1971-72.

For associate professors, the median age has also stayed level at 49 in the past decade, up nine years from 50 years ago.

The median age for full-time professors, meanwhile, has remained at 58 for the past five years, an increase of 10 years from five decades ago.

Staff below the level of assistant professor saw the largest age increase to 48 years from 31.

GENDER PARITY

Female teaching staff have seen their largest gains as full-time academics in the last 20 years, the StatCan report says.

It comes as women have become more "economically active," the report says, with women making up 47.8 per cent of the Canadian workforce between 25 and 54 years in 2021 compared to 35.4 per cent in 1976.

Women achieved gender parity below the rank of assistant professor in the early 1990s and now slightly outnumber men, StatCan found.

Moving through the ranks, women achieved gender parity at the assistant professor level in the 2017-18 academic year. In 2021-22, women made up 51 per cent of assistant professors in Canada.

The proportion of women as associate professors reached 44.3 per cent in 2021-22, five times more compared to 50 years ago.

While nearly 10 times greater compared to 1971-72, the largest gender gap still exists among full professors, where 31.4 per cent are women.

Women are also taking on more roles as deans at Canadian universities, rising to 45.3 per cent in 2021-22 from 3.9 per cent in 1971-72.