The issue of fixed term faculty--nontenured faculty working under contracts of fixed duration-- has proven to be among the most stressful in shaping the contours of shared governance at many institutions, including now Penn State. That was recently suggested at the November 2012 Senate Council meeting, at which even a fairly generic effort to begin an engagement in policy discussion suggested the sensitivity of issues of faculty composition, the relationship between contract and tenure faculty and the balance of authority to participate in the elaboration of policy with respect to these issues (e.g., Informal Notes of November 13, 2012 Senate Council Meeting).
(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2012)
At its root, perhaps, is a misguided application of a powerful insight developed in recent academic study of the issue of faculty composition. That insight has suggested that the current patterns of faculty mix, between tenured and contract faculty, are determined by market forces that exceed the ability of any single university to control, though perhaps they may manage the effects at the margins. See, e.g., Monk, David H.; Dooris, Michael J.; Erickson, Rodney A., "In Search of a New Equilibrium: Economic Aspects of Higher Education's Changing Faculty Composition," Education Finance and Policy, v4 n3 p300-318 Sum 2009
(Abstract: This article examines the interconnected phenomena of recruitment, retention, and utilization of faculty at research universities, with special emphasis on the changing mix of tenure track and contingent (i.e., fixed term) faculty members. The authors argue, based upon both national data and detailed information from a particular institution, that powerful economic forces are prompting research universities to rethink fundamental strategies about the core academic workforce).
But assuming the validity of these findings, it does not follow that the only appropriate response is to do nothing. More troubling would be to cede authority over faculty composition to mid-level administrators, deans and chancellors, by characterizing it as nothing more than a budgetary issue--a technique that increases the temptations to end run shared governance. Instead, the insight of the power of markets to control the character of faculty hires suggests most powerfully only the context and constraints within which decision making must be made--it does not suggest limits on the institutional stakeholders who ought to be engaged in decision making relating to the character of faculty composition. Thus, in an institution committed to deep shared governance, even were external forces substantially affecting the changes in the landscape of the character of faculty hiring, the faculty ought to have a voice in considering both the shape of those changes and the responses, even at the margin, to the these forces as they shape the character and hiring patterns at the university.
To that end, the Penn State University Faculty will be sponsoring a forensic discussion. This post includes a short discussion of the forensic, the forensic report, and a call to engage in the discussion about fixed term faculty in advance of the December 3, 2012 University Faculty Senate meeting at which the forensic will be conducted.
The difficulties of discussion touching on the issue of faculty composition at Penn State, like those at similar institutions, touch on a number of distinct relationships and many more sensibilities. See, e.g., Non-Tenure Track (Contingent or Fixed Term) Faculty and Shared Governance, A Report From the AAUP (June 28, 2012); Coalition on the Academic Workforce and AAUP: Publication of Results of Its Survey of Contingent Faculty (June 20, 2012); Address Delivered at Penn State AAUP Symposium on the Relevance of a Faculty Senate in the Modern University (May 1, 2012).
The University Faculty Senate has itself produced a number of reports about fixed term faculty, some of which have been posted to the Senate website:
Both administrators and important segments of university faculty themselves recognize the complexity seem reluctant to touch on the deep issues of faculty composition, of the consequences for the university, for academic freedom, for budgeting, that now confronts the university in the face of an almost equal division between contract and tenured faculty. One gets a sense of the difficulties of discussion from an excerpt of the minutes of the November Senate Council meeting:
The University Faculty Senate has itself produced a number of reports about fixed term faculty, some of which have been posted to the Senate website:
Trends and Patterns in the Use of Full and Part-Time Fixed-Term Faculty 2004-2010
(January 24, 2012; Intra-University Relations)
Rights and Responsibilities of Fixed-Term Faculty: Promotion and Governance
(September 9, 2008; Faculty Affairs)
Revision of Senate Standing Rules, Article II, Section 6 (f), Committee on Faculty Affairs, and Section 6 (i), Committee on Intra-University Relations, Subcommittee on Fixed-Term Faculty
(January 29, 2008; Committee on Committees and Rules)
Fixed-Term Faculty - A Review of University Policies for Appointment, Position Title, Promotion, Retention, and Advancement (April 25, 2006; Faculty Affairs)
Trends and Patterns in the Use of Full and Part-Time Fixed-Term Faculty
(April 27, 2004; Intra-University Relations)
Report on the Impact on Faculty Development of Hiring Faculty off the Tenure Track
(January 30, 2001; Faculty Affairs)
Multi-Year Fixed-Term Appointments and Definition of Selected Academic Ranks
(April 28, 1987; Faculty Affairs)
Both administrators and important segments of university faculty themselves recognize the complexity seem reluctant to touch on the deep issues of faculty composition, of the consequences for the university, for academic freedom, for budgeting, that now confronts the university in the face of an almost equal division between contract and tenured faculty. One gets a sense of the difficulties of discussion from an excerpt of the minutes of the November Senate Council meeting:
Intra-University Relations—A Strategy to Limit the Increased Use of Fixed-Term Faculty. This report was placed on the Agenda on an Egolf/Ansari motion. Following is a summary of the extended discussion on this report:
· Questions were asked about the factors contributing to the decline in the numbers of standing faculty.
· Concern was expressed that the report should have been vetted by the Faculty Affairs committee and also co-sponsored with them.
· Interim provost Pangborn commented that the report did not contain a complete set of data and that the report leads to “incorrect conclusions.”
· Some councilors were troubled by the structure of the report and observed that IRC, Faculty Affairs, and administration should meet to address the issues embedded in the report.
· A councilor commented that fixed-term faculty enables their unit to be more “nimble.” Other councilors wanted to see a more “robust” report with additional and less selective data, in-depth analysis, future directions, and conclusions.
· One councilor wanted the report to go forward for discussion but expressed the need for further study.
· Others noted that the issue is “complex” and warrants considerable deliberation.
· A councilor asked how many fixed-term faculty have been teaching for an “extended” length of time. Another councilor suggested a review and comparison of SRTE ratings for standing and fixed-term faculty.
At this point in the meeting, it was suggested that the report be withdrawn and returned to committee. Councilor Turner suggested that IRC reconsider this report for submission as a Forensic report. A straw vote was taken and there was strong support for withdrawing the report. Chair Lawlor asked if the report could be reframed as a Forensic report. On a Turner/Egolf motion, Senate Council supported having the report resubmitted as a Forensic report. IRC chair Lawlor will work with his committee to rewrite the report with forensic questions and resubmit it by 12 noon on November 16.
The Report that will serve as the foundation for the forensic was considered. It follows:
SENATE COMMITTEE ON INTRA-UNIVERSITY RELATIONS
The Increasing Trend in the Ratio of Fixed Term Faculty to Standing Faculty
FORENSICINTRODUCTIONIn January 2012, the Intra-University Relations Committee (IRC) of the University Faculty Senate presented an informational report, Trends and Patterns in the Use of Full and Part-time Fixed-Term Faculty 2004-2010. From the floor, the concern was raised that the increasing trends were significant and that an informational report may not be sufficient to address them or prompt action.The “Trends and Patterns” report concluded that the teaching role of Standing Faculty at the University was eroding as units began relying on Fixed-Term Faculty to shoulder an increasingly larger share of Student Credit Hours. The report states: “In 2010, only 50% of student credit hours at Penn State were taught by standing faculty -- a 34% decline in 18 years.” A June 2012 report to the Academic Leadership Council provides data that illustrates this decline.The purpose of this report is to seek guidance from the University Faculty Senate in order to further examine the faculty trends, present more accurate data and to establish recommendations for consideration by the Senate.FINDINGSThe data reported below can be found in a June 2012 presentation to the Academic Leadership Council and was graciously provided by the Office of Planning and Institutional Assessment (OPIA). These data provide a more accurate picture of the trend IRC sought to demonstrate in its January 2012 informational report. The tables below include ratios of Standing to Fixed-Term faculty (FT1 and FTM) and student credit-hour production (SCH) by appointment type for the University. Some tables also include “other,” which refers to graduate students and employees or adjuncts not included as teaching faculty. SCH production is further broken down to include percentages for University Park and the Commonwealth Campuses. For the purposes of this report, no distinction is drawn between FT1 and FTM positions. For a complete description of appointment type we refer the reader to the January 2012 IRC report referenced above.Table 1: Ratio of Standing to Fixed-Term Faculty (Resident Instruction – Full-time Equivalent)
QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATIONThe committee recognizes the budgetary challenges faced by the university, so this report does not identify a specific threshold for the ratio of standing faculty to Fixed-Term faculty. This report suggests that the University Administration work in conjunction with the Faculty Senate and asks the following questions:1. Should a threshold for the ratio of Standing Faculty to Fixed-Term Faculty be established?2. Should a threshold for the ratio of FTM to FT1 be established?Further, should the practice of converting FTM positions to FT1 be discouraged? While the committee recognizes the need for units to maintain budgetary flexibility, and that FT1 positions offer such flexibility, the practice of converting FTM to FT1 on a large scale substitutes short-term flexibility for long-term planning, may strain the foundations of the tenure system, and may compromise academic freedom.3. Should thresholds that do not increase reliance on FT2 positions be established?Further, should the University assert the Core Council recommendation that tenure-track and multi-year positions be added? The University may wish to consider offering incentives to those units in order to encourage them to set attainable goals in this area as permanent budget funds may not be adequate. One incentive may take the form of budget adjustments related to tenure-track or multi-year faculty positions. The University may also want units to address this matter in their next strategic planning process.SENATE COMMITTEE ON INTRA-UNIVERSITY RELATIONS
The "threshold" issues at the heart of the forensic are important ones. But at the same time they are crudely symptomatic of a greater concern--one that was raised in Monk, David H.; Dooris, Michael J.; Erickson, Rodney A., In Search of a New Equilibrium: Economic Aspects of Higher Education's Changing Faculty Composition, Education Finance and Policy, v4 n3 p300-318 Sum 2009, supra. By focusing merely on thresholds, the forensic may ignore the more important underlying issue for which the threshold determination would serve as a potential approach to resolving--that issue touches on the specific role of contract faculty within the university, and more importantly the issue of the characteristics that ought to distinguish contract from tenured faculty at the university. And those issues themselves touch on the foundational challenge for post secondary educational institutions in this century--what does it mean to be a research university in terms of expectations of knowledge production, knowledge sharing and public service. In a world in which the market for university services is itself increasingly a composite of aggregating markets in faculty status, tuition production, grant garnering cultures and the like, each existing polycentrically and not necessarily harmoniously with each other, the answers may not be either simple or straightforward.More complex still would be the division between contract and tenured faculty where the foundational premise of equivalence would suggest that that the only difference between them would be the ease with which the university could dismiss the former, potentially adding a measure of arbitrariness in academic appointments.
The issue of those characteristics that make contract faculty both distinct from tenured faculty and necessary to the operation of the university lies at the core of the issues around which forensic discussion is likely to develop. At the core of the question to be considered--hard wiring a numerical relationship between contract and tenured faculty--lies the core issue of what it means to be a member of a faculty. It also suggests the way in which the economics of university administration and the traditional focus of the mission of the university can sometimes produce tension in approaches to these issues. This is especially apparent where the differences of qualification or function between contract and tenured faculty diminish to insignificance. Thus, for example--if one posits absolutely no difference in the qualifications and expectations between tenured and contract faculty, then it might be possible to discuss the decision triggers for choosing one form of hire over another, and the mechanics for conversion from contract to tenure status. Also hidden within that conversation would be one that might focus on protection against movement from tenured to contract status--it has come to my attention, for example, that certain unit administrators have chosen to use this sort of threat as a technique of management. The calculus changes if one posits structuring contract and tenured faculty tracks on differences in qualifications or in expectations. More foundationally, it might be useful to discuss the value of a system that posits the possibility of hiring identically qualified people either as contract or tenured faculty and the protections against arbitrary use of discretion in this determination, especially by unit administrators who are essentially less accountable to their faculties than they once were (also a function of market forces). Alternatively, if it is better policy to distinguish between qualifications and expectations for contract and tenured faculty, then the issue would shift to one that would have to focus on the protection of contract faculty and the development of principled policy for describing and applying these distinctions. Or consider an additional alternative--the consideration of hard wiring functional differences in the performance expectations of contract and tenured faculty--for example contract faculty teach and tenured faculty research. But that would ten have repercussion on everything from work load policies to the way in which different classes of faculty are evaluated. And it would also require the development of substantial protections for both classes of faculty.
Any of these approaches could have significant repercussions on faculty governance. For example, when Purdue created its clinical-track professor policy it explicitly gave them Senate voting rights/eligibility. However, limited-term instructors, visiting assistant professors, research professors and adjuncts are explicitly excluded from Senate voting/eligibility. Hence, tenured, tenure-track and clinical-track faculty are the only faculty categories with Senate voting rights/eligibility. And, of course, to the extent that the "market forces" argument can be used to deflect discussion of the issue, it can more easily be re characterized as one merely touching on budgeting, a consequence of which is to create incentives to actions that may produce administrative bloat at the middle levels of university administration. See, e.g., Administrative Bloat by Deans and Other Unit Administrators--An Overlooked but Important Source of Direct Attack on Shared Governance. Beyond bloat, a faculty made up of a majority of members who are contract faculty--and dependent on the unit administrator for the extension of their contracts--may not be one which can exercise independent judgement in matters where a faculty vote is required. This is especially the case where contract faculty have no assurance of
protection against retaliation for exercising shared governance
activity. In the corporate world, for example, it is well understood that an individual
who serves at the pleasure of a superior is incapable of independent
action that affects that superior; the same would have to be true of contract faculty who serve at the pleasure of their unit administrators.Tenure provides a measure of independence that serves shared governance well; in the absence of a substitute for the effective protections of tenure, contract faculty exercise governance at their peril, whatever the good intentions of the people at whose pleasure they serve.
The realities of contract term faculty hires, their utility for the maximization of the production of student tuition revenues, and the tremendous changes in the market, and market tolerance, for the tenured faculty member, are far more complex than this simple set of observations suggests. The authors of In Search of a New Equilibrium: Economic Aspects of Higher Education's Changing Faculty Composition, supra, were right to suggest that complexity in the face of the structural forces at work in the re-orientation of the university's knowledge production and teaching workforces, and their consequences for the university, it would be incongruous to speak of policy that shapes or counters the trends to which the university is subject. But knowing those trends, and the character of the market provide a useful background and context for the sort of governance discussion that is necessary as the university--including its board, administrators and faculty--confronts its structuring options, even as those might be constrained by the market. This is not to suggest that the university ought not to hold contract faculty in the same high regard as they hold tenured faculty. Indeed the opposite might be true--now that they make up almost half of all faculty, the university needs to move more forcefully toward regimes of greater respect and protection for contract faculty if the university means to preserve the long term reputation and quality of its knowledge production business.
What the desire for the forensic makes clear, though, is that, at least at the faculty level, these sorts of conversations--hard, honest and respectful of all faculty at Penn State--contract and tenured faculty--have not yet happened. Rather, while markets have spoken, the faculty has remained silent. If faculty are meant to be passive actors in the progress of market forces that--interpreted and applied by administrators--is to significantly affect their relationship to the university, then the power of shared governance, at its core, will be substantially weakened. I hope that all who have given these issues some thoughts, or who would have this conversation directed into specific areas will be encouraged to share their thoughts. An open, honest, respectful conversation is a necessary first step toward refashioning the relationships among contract and tenured faculty and their collective contributions to the university.
No comments:
Post a Comment