George's Higher Ed Med Shed: Tenure

Tenure

07/07/2010

Can Federal Funding Actually Be a Threat to Tenure?

30%, 40%, 50%, or more: that's the proportion of their salaries medical researchers are often asked to provide through their grants, money the public believes is going directly to research. Instead, shortsighted administrators, whose six-figure salaries are most definitely NOT dependent on their performance, increasingly make faculty salaries, one of the largest, if not THE largest expense item in the budget, dependent on the largess of primarily the federal government. So what is going to happen when the spigot runs dry? Oh, in the short run, an easy lap or two around faculty senates, the same administrators who have made their faculty fund greater and greater proportions of their own salaries will also try to tell everyone that the federal spigots will never run dry, and everyone should just go back to sleep. Meanwhile, university decision-makers can continue to spend that proportion of their budgets formerly devoted to faculty salaries on their own salaries, perks, or pet projects.

Sooner or later, however, the federal spending spree has got to end, and higher education will have to face the long run, a run it is woefully out of shape to complete. Our economy is in trouble, federal deficits loom large, and the clamor to reduce government spending, particularly from conservative quarters, is growing louder and louder. By the way, faculty are not immensely popular in conservative circles, and Texas is a conservative state, after all.

So what's going to happen? When federal organizations like the National Institutes of Health start cutting back, administrators will put on their long faces and start talking about a budget crisis. What they won't say is that they created the crisis themselves over the years. The next thing faculty know, they will be facing a RIF, a reduction in force. Even tenured faculty are not immune to a RIF born of economic necessity. In fact, with administrators seeking to consolidate control as well, tenured faculty could be more at risk than non-tenured faculty, particularly since tenured faculty are more senior and tend to make more money.

My guess, however, is that the vast majority of faculty, tenured or not, will meekly accept the status quo until it is too late. After all, bucking the system involves risk to one's career. Of course, making faculty salaries more and more dependent on federal dollars involves risk too, doesn't it?

Jul 7, 2010 8:22:20 AM | Budgets, Compensation, Tenure

07/06/2010

From the "Point out the Obvious" Department: Tenure in Trouble

Yep, tenure is in trouble, particularly in Texas, which tends to lead the nation in higher education trends along with California, of course. The University of Texas, as I've pointed out many times, has publicly stated that tenure protects only a position and not compensation, which leaves faculty open to constructive termination. You cut faculty members' pay enough, and they'll leave. Then, there's the AAUP censure of the University of Texas Medical Branch and how it treated its own tenured faculty. Yes, there's no doubt about it: tenure is in trouble.

To some extent, however, I have to blame faculty for allowing this to happen. To a large degree, faculty has forgotten that those who govern do so with the consent of the governed. As an observer of higher education and as a participant in a variety of fracases, I can testify that (1) the majority of faculty, hoping the management lynch mob will pass them by, will stand by while one of their colleagues is burned at the stake by administrators, and (2) many of these members of the "silent, shameful majority" are encouraged by administrators into faculty governance slots, effectively silencing any meaningful faculty voice in university affairs. Faculty senates that merely serve as echo chambers of administrators' desires are more numerous than senates that do their job. Even faculty senates that try to do their jobs must also contend with officers and other senators trying to further their careers by currying favor with the administration. These self promoters think only of themselves and never of what they're doing to academic freedom or the greater good. Yet as tenure continues its retreat, these sycophants only become more prolific.

Tenure does not have to continue to recede. Those who govern do so by consent of the governed.

Tenure, RIP - Labor & Work-Life Issues - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007. The new report is expected to show that that proportion fell even further in 2009, dropping below one-third. If you add graduate teaching assistants to the mix, those with some kind of tenure status represent a mere quarter of all instructors.

Jul 6, 2010 10:20:06 AM | Tenure, UT System, UTMB

06/29/2010

UTHSC Houston Faculty Compensation Plan

In response to a Texas Public Information Act request, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston sent me the compensation plan linked below. As readers can see, faculty compensation at UTHSC is based on three components: base compensation, "augmentation compensation," and incentive compensation. Base compensation is relatively hard for administrators to manipulate because it is based on faculty rank. Augmentation and incentive compensation, however, are relatively malleable. Please allow me to remind readers once again that the University of Texas publicly stated policy on tenure is that it protects only a position and not compensation.

Download UTHSC Houston Comp HOOP 193

Jun 29, 2010 6:16:07 AM | Compensation, Tenure, UTHSC Houston

05/29/2010

Tenure's Biggest Threat Is at Medical Institutions

The biggest threat to academic tenure lies like a snake ready to strike passersby at medical academic institutions, and the greatest threat may well be coiled up at University of Texas medical institutions. Why do I say this? I say this mostly because of what has happened over the past few years in Texas. First, let us not forget that the UT Executive Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, Dr. Kenneth I. Shine, has repeatedly and publicly stated that tenure protects only a position and not a salary. This stance, of course, leaves a faculty member wide open to what is known as "constructive termination." Constructive termination occurs when a faculty member's salary is cut to a level that is intolerable, requiring the faculty member to seek another job. The University of Texas Medical Branch, an institution directly under Dr. Shine, at least thought about doing this on a massive scale. Please see the e-mail linked below in which former UTMB Dean Valerie Parisi discusses cutting tenured faculty salary in order to run them off:

Download Parisi-Stobo re tenured salaries 060622

Now, I wouldn't expect administrators to say, "We're cutting your pay to run you off." No, they would get on their game faces and talk about how bad the budget was, how they needed to make cuts, and how everyone needed to sacrifice. In other words, the institution would have to lie to its tenured faculty as a matter of course in order to pull something like that off. Although UTMB never fully implemented this scheme, I, in fact, saw several faculty members' pay cut in an effort to make them dissatisfied enough to leave. This was done mostly through the manipulation of resources. These faculty members, by the way, were tenured.

Here is a syllogism for my readers:

Resources control faculty productivity.
Administrators control resources.
Administrators control faculty productivity.

So how do you go about cutting a tenured faculty member's pay? One way to do it, and the way I've seen it done several times, is simply to restrict the resources that a faculty member has to be productive. This is particularly effective at an institution like UTMB, where faculty compensation is based in large part on productivity. I have seen lab space taken away from faculty. I've seen faculty reassigned to less lucrative pursuits. I've seen opportunities for professional growth and development denied out of hand. The problem is that for institutions where tenure protects only a position and not salary, all those resources are fair game.

As the old saw goes, "Money is the root of all evil." A tremendous amount of money, whether through patient revenue or government grants or whatever source, moves through a medical institution's coffers every year. With corporate management steadily taking hold in academia, the push for faculty to be more productive will only grow more intense as the years go by. Academia's corporate managers will have very little regard for concepts like tenure and the academic freedom that tenure protects. They will be concerned primarily with the bottom line of the spreadsheet and keeping the faculty complacent and cowed. For instance, when UTMB laid off three of the last five faculty senate presidents during its 2008 reduction in force, what effect do you suppose that had on the remaining faculty? Do you think they got the message? How about the faculty who watched what happened to Dr. Robert Klebe at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio? How about the faculty who watched what happened to Dr. Larry Gentilello at UT Southwestern Medical Center? I would think that a whole bunch of faculty got the message.

Yes, tenure is in real trouble, and nowhere more so than medical institutions, where the temptation to manipulate money is the greatest. Faculty at these institutions must decide if they're going to stand up for what is right, or if they're going to be "complacent and cowed." Most will take a look at their mortgages and tuition rates for their children and opt for the latter. The problem for the bad guys is that it doesn't take too many good people standing together to stop them. That's why these few are often called "heroes." Tenure could use a few heroes where they're needed most right now: medical institutions.

May 29, 2010 7:10:54 AM | Budgets, Compensation, Tenure, UT Southwestern, UT System, UTMB

01/02/2010

FULL-TIME PROFS A VANISHING BREED

In the quest to save money but not necessarily higher education, administrators are increasingly turning to adjuncts. The New York Times, via a story titled "The Case of the Vanishing Full-Time Professor," discusses this phenomenon. An excerpt:

In 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or tenure-track professors; today only 27 percent are. The rest are graduate students or adjunct and contingent faculty — instructors employed on a per-course or yearly contract basis, usually without benefits and earning a third or less of what their tenured colleagues make. The recession means their numbers are growing.

After perusing the above article, readers are encouraged to take a look at this September story on the Inside Higher Ed website. It seems that colleges and universities are hiding their adjuncts when competing for a ranking in the U. S. News & World Report. Please see "Hiding Adjuncts from U. S. News." An excerpt:

The American Federation of Teachers on Wednesday posted a blog item asking how it is, given those well documented trends, that magazine rankings give parents the sense that most of the teaching at large universities is done by full-time faculty members. "The majority of top colleges report well over 80 percent of their faculty are full-time and a large number report that well over 90 percent of their faculty are full-time. University of Nebraska-Lincoln even reports that 100 percent of its faculty are full-time," the blog says of institutions in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, a small part of which are based on the percentage of faculty who are full time. "Amazing!"

Jan 2, 2010 7:12:34 AM | Tenure

12/26/2009

POST-IKE UTMB BIGGER THAN PRE-IKE: HOW ABOUT RIF'D FACULTY?

In a story titled "UTMB Sees a Reversal of Fortune" in the 12/25/09 on-line edition of the Houston Chronicle, a UTMB spokeswoman says that, eventually, UTMB will have about 1,000 more employees than it did before Hurricane Ike struck. Please see the excerpt below:

Although the UT Board of Regents authorized 3,800 layoffs, UTMB officials announced that about 3,000 jobs would be cut. The actual number turned out to be about 2,400, but it was widely interpreted as a step toward dismantling Texas' oldest medical school. The Legislature forced the regents to reverse policy, a stunning change of fortune that is slowly beginning to benefit the local economy.
UTMB has already filled more than half of the jobs left vacant by the layoffs and eventually will have nearly 1,000 more employees than before the storm, said Cindy Stanton, UTMB director of recruitment services.

First, please allow me to point out that the utterly false 2,400 number keeps turning up as a fact. Here is an e-mail from UTMB President Callender that says he was getting set to cut about 3,000 the DAY BEFORE he began wielding the knife. Because of this particular e-mail's historical importance, I'm including the complete text rather than simply an excerpt:

From: UTMB Broadcast Account
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:57:02 -0600
Conversation: A Special Message from the President

I realize that no amount of forewarning will make this message any easier for the UTMB community to receive.

Tomorrow, we will begin giving notice to approximately 3,000 faculty and staff whose positions are part of the reduction in force authorized by the University of Texas System Board of Regents [http://www.utsystem.edu/News/2008/BOR-Statement-UTMB-11-12-08.html]. We expect to complete the process Monday, November 24.

As you know, the damage the campus sustained in the wake of Ike has caused us to suspend or reduce a number of clinical programs, significantly diminishing our ability to generate revenue. This painful but necessary next step will reduce the workforce to the number needed to support an initial hospital configuration of 200 beds and to protect and preserve our education and research missions. It will affect individuals in every area and at every level of the organization, including agency and contract personnel and those who work overtime.

Senior leadership and managers have given considerable thought to the type of work needed to ensure UTMB’s success during this challenging recovery and transition period. They have identified the combination of skills needed to perform those critical tasks. And, when the number of positions exceeded the volume of available work, they based individual staffing decisions on criteria such as skill set, performance and service orientation.

Classified employees will receive 60 days’ notice with full salary and benefits, consistent with UTMB’s practice. Administrative and Professional employees will receive a minimum of 60 days’ notice with full salary and benefits. Non-tenured faculty will receive six months’ notice with full salary and benefits, and tenured and tenure-track faculty will receive notice with full salary and benefits through August 31, 2009, the end of the fiscal year.

Managers will make every effort to talk face-to-face with employees whose positions are affected. In the event this isn’t possible, managers will notify them via email, phone or letter.

We remain committed to doing everything we can to support those affected by this decision and will continue to provide access to the full range of job search resources – including job fairs; employment, financial and personal counseling; and classes on effective resume writing and interviewing – at our island and mainland help centers [http://www.utmb.edu/utmbemployeehelpcenter]. Classified and A&P employees will receive preference for open UTMB positions for up to one year from the date of their notice. UT System officials have asked that these employees receive priority consideration for positions at other UT institutions, and numerous area employers have expressed an active interest in interviewing and hiring UTMB employees. We also continue to explore options for employees who may be eligible for retirement.

The loss of so many dedicated professionals will be felt throughout the institution. I thank you all for serving UTMB so well for so many years, and for working tirelessly since Hurricane Ike to protect and preserve our core missions. I have faith that the spirit that has characterized UTMB for more than 100 years will help this great institution achieve the promise of a bright future.

Dr. David L. Callender
UTMB President

From the above e-mail, it is clear that UTMB officials had a precise idea of how many jobs they were going to cut the day before they started handing out pink slips: 3,000, not 2,450, a number that has acquired the status of unchallenged, anointed fact now. What I figure happened is that revisionist administrators decided not to count those they "encouraged" to retire or those who left for other reasons, never came back after the hurricane, etc; however, if a reporter were to pin them down and ask about the number of positions thrown overboard rather than people, I believe that number would shoot right back up to 3,000 or so.

Now, having scratched that irritating, historical itch, I'll turn my attention to the 127 RIF'd faculty, particularly tenured, RIF'd faculty, who have a much stronger claim to their old jobs than those RIF'd without tenure. If UTMB is not only hiring to its former strength but also hiring an additional 1,000 people eventually, it is reasonable to assume that some of those will be faculty. Will RIF'd faculty be reemployed by UTMB? Although I have heard that a RIF'd faculty member here and there got his or her job back, I expect all but a handful to be left out in the cold. Why? President Callender announced at a town meeting on March 26, 2009, that he had no plans to bring any of them back. I believe him. So do the unemployed faculty. Indeed, even as administrators were booting faculty out the door, they were hiring new faculty, as the The Scientist article titled "Texas School Hired While Firing" so pointedly highlighted. Hurricane Ike was simply the excuse for an attack on tenure and faculty members who had incurred the disfavor of their chairs or other administrators.

Despite the rosy picture painted by the Houston Chronicle, all this hiring holds out very little hope for RIF'd faculty.

Dec 26, 2009 9:24:37 AM | Faculty mistreatment, Reduction in force, Tenure

George's Higher Ed Med Shed