If you look to the right in the picture below, you can see me holding a sign that says, “Restore full-time faculty lines NOW!” This picture was taken by a NYSUT photographer at a rally we held last week to protest the recent policies and decision put into place by our new college president.
Among the things we are protesting–and I am quoting here from the article on the NYSUT higher education page–are
The creation of “shadow governing bodies” by the administration that have ignored the academic senate; and the non-renewal of 39 “temporary appointment” faculty who were let go just before their status would have moved into the probationary stage on a track to permanent employment.
One specific administrative action that has infuriated faculty was the president’s choice to veto a proposal by a department on campus to require that students entering its major first pass remedial English. I will post more, and in more detail, at a later date about the situation at my college. Things are too much in flux right now for me to say much more than I have said here; but this work is what I have been doing when I would have preferred to be writing. Unless the faculty and our new president reach some kind of understanding–and I really hope we can; there are meetings set between now and the beginning of the semester–the real fight begins on September 1st, when classes start.
It’s one thing for the school President to let temp faculty go before they attained a status that would have made it more difficult to do so. That kind of thing can be simply a financial one, and that’s part of the President’s job. In this economy, cutbacks are often necessary, although never pleasant. I am curious, however, as to why the departmental recommendation for requiring incoming students to their major to take remedial English (or, I presume, demonstrate that they didn’t need to). That sounds like a good idea to me.
Sounds like a good idea to me, too. Heck, make it an admissions requirement. (And then shut down the bottom half of our colleges.)
Ron:
That is certainly true, but cuts also have political meaning. Where one is willing and unwilling to cut; how much one cuts from where; etc. Since these are some of the details I can’t go into now, I’m not going to say more than this: Cutting between 5% and 10% of a college’s full time faculty, especially when there were other cuts that could have been made (there are administrators who have admitted as much) that would have saved faculty jobs without damaging either the academic or administrative integrity of the institution, seems to me to be about a good deal more than purely budgetary considerations.
Well, that’s fine. And I understand that laying out the details would take time you don’t have now.
Meanwhile, back in England, the looting has got completely out of hand.
I’ve been reading about the “higher education bubble” (kind of like the housing bubble, where what you pay costs you more than the value you’re getting and it gets to the point that a) people can’t pay and b) the industry implodes). It seems that at some schools at least there are now more administrators than there are faculty (U of Mich – Flint is an example).