I've been chewing on this one for a few weeks, not quite knowing where to begin. I could say "begin at the beginning," which is easy, in theory. If only I knew where the beginning was.

Is it the overall bad economy? Does it relate to trends in higher education that began back in the 1970s? Is it, somehow, Bill Clinton's fault? I'm not sure. What I do know is that over the past few months the Board of Regents for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System has begun to dismantle one of the foundational principles of higher education. And in turn various officials around the state have supported the decisions. And that these decisions are part of a trend.





On March 13, 2008, the Board of Regents for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System voted to abolish tenure for all new faculty hired after July 1, 2009. Despite numerous resolutions condemning the vote from Faculty Senates across the state, despite appeals to the president of the KCTCS system [who was the one who pushed for the policy change], and despite many letters to the governor, it seems that this decision will stand.

In gauging the opposition to this move, one would be hard-pressed to find a greater show of unity among people working in institutions of higher education in any state on most any issue in the past few decades.

From editorials in major newspapers [pdf] in the state, to faculty resolutions, to resolutions from professional organizations, to online petitions, university faculty and even staff worked to get this decision overturned. To no avail.

But they were fighting against more than the KCTCS Board of Regents' decision. Faculty at institutions of higher education suffer a barrage of negative publicity in newspapers about so-called "liberal faculty," the public's general assumption that higher-ed faculty work a few months out of the year and then take the summers off, there is a general devaluation of faculty in general, and a public hostility towards tenure.

In my opinion, the decision by KCTCS reflects a long-term decline in both the valuation of faculty by Boards and administration-types, as well as a short-term change in how Boards are composed. Nowadays many Boards are staffed by political appointees who come from the world of business. These folks see the university as a business, and to them faculty and staff (or "labor") are an obstacle—a problem to overcome in the management of a business.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a couple of meetings of some Boards of Regents. It was not unlike watching sausage get made. The process is ugly, and I think most faculty wouldn't want to see what goes into it.

At one university meeting during the semester the issue of faculty compensation came up. Given the deep budget cuts, faculty at that particular institution will not receive raises in the coming fiscal year. As the president of that university explained, nobody would—the financial situation was too dire, and the state had directed that no state employees would receive a raise.

Except that when the Board published its meeting agenda, it turned out that several administrators and a few well-placed faculty would receive raises in amounts up to $30,000 per year. It also turned out that other state employees would, in fact, receive raises—despite the claims by that university president.

As you might expect, when word of the raises leaked, there was a great deal of outrage. At the Regents' meeting for that university the faculty regent expressed her outrage and noted that the university had already lost three faculty from a single department because of what was seen as a lack of concern for faculty on the part of the administration, as well as because of salary issues. In response one of the Regents pointed out that those faculty were easily replaceable, and that a university needed people who were going to be loyal. There was no dissent.

A few minutes later, when the discussion turned to the administrators' raises, the Regents began praising the work of the administration, and noted that sometimes salary increases were needed in order to retain high-quality people.

At the next meeting of that same board, one of the administrators who received a hefty raise also received a fairly substantial series of bonuses, which elicited the comment from one regent that "this nice little bonus" recognizes the hard work that people do.

Fast forward and change places to the meeting of another board, which I also had the opportunity to attend. Here the Trustees sat through presentation after presentation from different units on that campus. And in fact the presentations on what they had achieved were quite interesting. From sustainable landscaping to dorm retention rates to a series of absolutely fascinating academic initiatives, the faculty and staff of the university were clearly moving in the right direction. Most of the academic presentations were justified by "this isn't going to cost us anything." At the end of each presentation the Trustees either said nothing, or gave a polite "Thank you."

Then came the presentation from the Athletic Director. It was mostly a litany of what will be achieved in the future, and "look at that shiny object over there" moments to distract from the fact that the athletic program is losing money. At one point the faculty representative to the Board of Trustees asked to see a balance sheet for how much had been spent versus how much money was coming in. This was met with indignation and cries of "what an athletics program brings to a university is so intangible."

When the presentation ended the Trustees fell all over themselves praising the athletics director for having such a fine program, for such a great presentation, and for being such a great guy. It bordered on the sycophantic.

I know that this sort of thing isn't confined to a couple of regional schools. It's endemic. Universities have become more top-heavy as non-educational services have increased. Anyone who has read Beer and Circus knows what athletics is doing to higher education.

And yet I can't hep but notice a larger trend wherein universities are simultaneously touting their educational bone fides in terms of the undergraduate "experience," distance education, and continuing education, while at the same time devaluing the faculty who serve as the backbone of that learning experience.

Or are they, in fact, the backbone? The recent decision to eliminate tenure by the KCTCS is a harbinger of things to come. Not a year goes by without the AHA publishing a report on the increased use of adjuncts for teaching. And those adjuncts have it crappier than ever.

The devaluation of our profession is worse than you think. Here's some homework for you. Check to see if your university employs high school teachers to teach college-level courses. And I use the word "employ" pretty loosely here. Many universities have developed programs where high school teachers pay the university to teach for-credit college courses to high school students, and then the teachers receive credit for teaching the class.

That's right, the university is being paid by high school teachers for the privilege of teaching classes. These are usually 100-level classes that fulfill a Gen-Ed requirement of some sort. You are being replaced by high school teachers in the name of economic efficiency, and with a budget crisis and university priorities such as "outreach" and continuing education as an excuse. Can it be much longer before administrators use this as a bargaining tactic with departments and faculty? "You know, you can be replaced by someone who will pay us to teach."

As administrators continue to devalue the work of faculty, our jobs are going to get tougher, and a whole host of attendant problems will manifest themselves. Already faculty have largely lost their voice in university governance, in many cases to students who are seen as customers and who therefore ought to have a voice in university affairs all out of proportion to the experience.

I don't know what the solution is at this point, but I'm all ears. My natural reaction is that faculty ought to unionize, but that apparently doesn't help any more.

What do you think?

Labels: AndrewMC, Higher Education, KCTCS, Regents, tenure, trustees

I've been chewing on this one for a few weeks, not quite knowing where to begin. I could say "begin at the beginning," which is easy, in theory. If only I knew where the beginning was.

Is it the overall bad economy? Does it relate to trends in higher education that began back in the 1970s? Is it, somehow, Bill Clinton's fault? I'm not sure. What I do know is that over the past few months the Board of Regents for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System has begun to dismantle one of the foundational principles of higher education. And in turn various officials around the state have supported the decisions.





On March 13, 2008, the Board of Regents for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System voted to abolish tenure for all new faculty hired after July 1, 2009. Despite numerous resolutions condemning the vote from Faculty Senates across the state, despite appeals to the president of the KCTCS system [who was the one who pushed for the policy change], and despite many letters to the governor, it seems that this decision will stand.

In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find a great show of unity among institutions of higher education in any state on most any issue in the past few decades.

From editorials in major newspapers [pdf] in the state, to faculty resolutions, to resolutions from professional organizations, to online petitions, to negative publicity in the Chronicle of Higher Education (here and here) and Inside Higher Ed, this is not a quiet story.

But it is a complex one.

In my opinion, the decision by KCTCS reflects a long-term decline in both the valuation of faculty by Boards and administration-types, as well as a short-term change in how Boards are composed.

A few decades ago Boards of Regents positions were filled by a wide range of people in various positions--lawyers, doctors, businesspeople, community leaders, etc. While I haven't seen a survey to indicate the make up of Boards today (AHA? Have you done one?) my informal searches have turned up Boards comprised--by and large--of business owners. While they may have some kind of business savvy with regard to whatever business they run, they don't seem to know much about how to run a university. When was the last time the Board of Regents at your college voted down a proposal by your university president? How often does it happen? If they pay much attention at all to the workings of the school they're supposed to oversee, they tend to view the school as a business that caters to a "customer base"--the student. And the point of a business is to squeeze as much money from a customer (here in the form of tuition) while expending as little of that revenue as possible (here, on salaries).

They also tend to see faculty as little more than "hired help" to be managed in the same way as one might handle a fast-food employee--keep salaries to a bare minimum, scale back or eliminate as many benefits as possible, and eliminate "problem" employees who prevent the business from functioning efficiently. That is to say--faculty are an obstacle to be overcome in the running of an efficient business.

Tenure falls into the category of "anti-efficiency," in the minds of some. It is a luxury at best, an impediment at worst. It prevents them from firing the Ward Churchills of the world, it prevents them from implementing serious cost-saving measures.

The place of faculty in a university, at least as far as many Regents are concerned, can probably best be understood by taking the words of Yevette Haskins, regent at Western Kentucky University. At an April meeting in which salary issues were being discussed, Regent Haskins responded to concerns over low faculty morale and potential resignations by commenting that there are plenty of other faculty looking for jobs. Her attitude indicates her belief that faculty are easily replaceable--nobody rose to disagree. While there are many faculty out there looking for jobs, one can't help but wonder at the regard with which she holds the skills of the faculty in her university. Another regent commented that any faculty who didn't like working at that university ought to leave, while at the same time justifying huge salary increases for some administrators by saying that it was important to retain quality people. It was easy to see where faculty ranked in terms of value to the university. I suspect this attitude reigns at many schools.

As far as the general public is concerned, this question is a non-starter. People who hold a "job for life" in the midst of this miserable economy have a hard time explaining why this system is important. Most people think tenure is some weird, outdated system. Some arguments against are predictable, others are fairly interesting.

The overall result: a decline in tenure-track jobs at the same time that overall faculty positions have increased. This is not a new trend. Universities, when run like businesses, will naturally look to minimize labaor costs, valuing the bottom line over something as nebulous as "quality education." This is especially true when the bottom line can be easily measured, while quality education is measured through flawed US News & World Report rankings [here and here] and misleading teacher evaluation tools.

Adjuncts will (and have already) tell us that faculty being treated as merely hired help is nothing new, either. Adjuncts have suffered this for years, and for them this whole issue may carry some "and when they came for me" shadenfreude. Yet tenure is valuable, as essayists and even courts have affirmed.

So, what is to be done? I don't know. Faculty have less of a voice in university governance than ever before, and the process is accelerating. In many states faculty are either unable or unwilling to unionize. This makes it hard to resist these changes. Senate resolutions are nice, but they don't mean much.

It will probably require faculty to make a greater effort to speak up, loudly, on their campuses. Faculty either have a voice, or they do not. Faculty either care to have that voice heard, or they do not. Faculty either want to have an effective voice on their campuses, or it is not particularly important to them. Faculty must decide. All faculty should be concerned with this and should ask some difficult questions of our universities. Faculty have to make clear to their communities--and themselves--why tenure is an important component of higher education.

Right now we are in an uphill battle. From Regents to university administrators to the general public, the system of tenure is under assault. We must decide if it is worth fighting for.

Labels: AndrewMC, Board of Regents, KCTCS, tenure