Prepare to Hear a Lot About the Budget Cuts

~ Clarissa

To offset the budget cuts to our university, the administration is discussing the possibility of increasing the teaching loads of people who are not active in research.

I don’t even want to imagine the kind of intolerable environment this will create in the departments, especially the small ones.

The problem is that I recently realized that I want to work at this university forever because I love it. Yes, the region is sucky, and the climate is shit, and the state is among the most broke in the country, and the dog obsession is even worse than the driving obsession, and it’s extremely hard to find tolerable food or a place to walk.

But I love the university. And love cannot be explained. It happens on a level that stands above reason.

This is not the first time I love a university. I loved McGill before. But it has been destroyed, and now there are no more Hispanic Studies at McGill. The university has repeated the story of the Roman Empire in miniature.

It’s like you keep falling in love but the people you love keep dying.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Clarissa

46 thoughts on “Prepare to Hear a Lot About the Budget Cuts”

  1. “To offset the budget cuts to our university, the administration is discussing the possibility of increasing the teaching loads of people who are not active in research.”

    So, some tenured professors are not active in research now?

    Like

    Reply

    1. Nobody has given us a definition of what “active in research” means. It might mean “brings in huge grants.” This will immediately disqualify everybody in the Humanities.

      Like

      Reply

  4. “I loved McGill before. But it has been destroyed, and now there are no more Hispanic Studies at McGill.”

    This is ludicrous, especially when you consider the fact that this university is overfinanced, like almost all english institutions in Québec.

    Like

    Reply

  5. You know where I did my PhD. The legislature cut the budget every year I was there. At the same time, three Hispanic literature professors retired, and two passed away. End result: they can only offer graduate degrees in Hispanic linguistics, because they only hired 2 professors to replace the 5 that are not there any more.

    Like

    Reply

    1. This is exactly what we are being promised: early retirements for profs and closing down the teaching lines. 😦 And all this while at least 5 brand-new positions of ultra-well-paid bureaucrats with ridiculous titles are being opened.

      Like

      Reply

  8. It makes good sense to increase the teaching loads of non-publishing tenured faculty. That is standard policy at George Mason University. Because the university is a research university, most faculty teach two classes per semester and many advise a number of doctoral students. Those who do not publish over a three year period go to four classes per semester. They have to perform well at such teaching in order to secure merit pay. Some non-publishing, poor teaching faculty have not received a pay increase in 10 years.

    Incentives matter if an institution is to live with tenure and secure high-quality performances.

    Like

    Reply

    2. “Those who do not publish over a three year period go to four classes per semester. They have to perform well at such teaching in order to secure merit pay. Some non-publishing, poor teaching faculty have not received a pay increase in 10 years.”

      I would have no problem to be a professor with that kind of policy. In Québec, this is non-existent.

      Like

      Reply

      1. I can’t imagine not publishing in 3 years, so this part of the policy is not what concerns me. I’m afraid of the intolerable environment of gossip and intrigues this might create. No budget cuts and no administration can destroy a department better and faster than gossip and intrigue.

        Like

        Reply

        1. Because somebody will have to make the decision as to what counts as a publication, whose teaching loads will grow and whose won’t, etc. I’ve witnessed several merit reviews and they always cause drama. For one person, a publication is rated as excellent in research, for another person it is rates as unsatisfactory in research. So then people get resentful and suspicious, etc.

          Like

          Reply

      1. “Many very bad teachers are tenured here.”

        – People don’t get any training in pedagogy and have no idea how to engage with students. In my literature course, the walls shake with laughter and discussions. I just laugh at people who are so inept that they have to prohibit the use of cell phones in class because they have no idea how to keep the students interested.

        Like

        Reply

  9. In a department where the large majority of professors publish several papers each year in highly-cited journals, the policy is appreciated. Each year a committee of three senior professors evaluates all performance and grades it. This report goes to the chairman. If the chairman changes an evaluation he must justify that change to the committee. The ranking of economics journals is fairly well-established so there is little reason for controversy there. Papers in non-refereed outlets are given little weight, but everyone knows that ahead of time. Regarding teaching, student evaluations are used but are supplemented by evaluations by faculty who sit in on occasional classes, especially in the classes of those with poor past teaching records..

    There is little complaint. Those who receive poor evaluations can leave if they can find another suitable position – which invariably they cannot.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Thank you, Charles Rowley. It makes me feel better to know that there are departments who have organized this process in a reasonable, civilized way.

      Blogging is great because I now feel a lot more hopeful.

      Like

      Reply

  10. These types of measures infuriate me. I hate when universities institute these punitive measures in order to ensure that faculty “work.” It’s insulting and perpetuates the myth of lazy and overpaid faculty. Not all faculty are perfect of course. But I have been involved with quite a few universities and by and large, faculty are very hard working. Further, these types of measures, as you suggest, create this terrible culture in which faculty compete against one another and are always suspicious and paranoid. All the while administrators, who spend their day in unnecessary meetings and are never held to any sort of standard, are making 3-4 times what faculty make. Fire three administrators and the budget problems will be solved.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Our alternative is not firing administrators – which I obviously welcome – but firing all the contingent faculty. If we do that, our department will only achieve a 5% cut instead of a 25% cut. Given that 96% of our departmental budget is formed by the salaries of TT and T faculty, you can imagine what the next step will be.

      The useless bureaucrats in HR and all such services are unionized and nobody can touch them. And anyways, the entire burden of the cuts is currently placed exclusively on the departments. Nobody is asking the auxiliary services to cut even a dime.

      Like

      Reply

  11. TT unproductive professors will retire b/c they will not want to teach a 4/4 load. They will not be replaced. Junior faculty and TT prof who want to stay will then face the following options: 1) cap your classes at 40, 50, 75, 100, and more, or 2) refuse students in your program for a lack of space, and thus limit growth.

    Where I work languages classes capped at 16 in 2010, now it is 25. 2 prof. retired during these years. 1 was not replaced and the other was replaced by a VAP. So we have demand but the administration limits our growth.

    But at the same time the university payed an insane amount of money to hire a firm to assess our assessments.

    Finally, and because I am optimistic, I am happy that you felt in love with your university. You will achieve great things there.

    Like

    Reply

  12. The semester I have the luxury of teaching an Intermediate Spanish section with only 10 students. My friend… you would not belive the things I did with these students because of that. In their midterm ‘placement exam’ (this is our assessment tool for the U) they score almost as high as 400-level students in Spanish.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I don’t even want to imagine something so great. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by allowing these measures to solve some invented and inflated crisis du jour. Idiocy, idiocy, idiocy.

      Like

      Reply

  13. We haven’t had cost of living or merit for anyone in 5 years. And you have to look at teaching range not just number of classes, to determine how much people are working.

    Most undergraduate classes here are taught by instructors with 5-course loads. Now, to make up for the lack of raises and lack of funds to hire more, they will be allowed to tach 7 per semester, for extra pay. You can see where quality of non mechanical teaching will go in this situation.

    Like

    Reply

  14. “TT unproductive professors will retire b/c they will not want to teach a 4/4 load. They will not be replaced. Junior faculty and TT prof who want to stay will then face the following options: 1) cap your classes at 40, 50, 75, 100, and more, or 2) refuse students in your program for a lack of space, and thus limit growth.

    “Where I work languages classes capped at 16 in 2010, now it is 25. 2 prof. retired during these years. 1 was not replaced and the other was replaced by a VAP. So we have demand but the administration limits our growth.

    “But at the same time the university payed an insane amount of money to hire a firm to assess our assessments.”

    Yes, this is where it is going. It is no longer really about producing good research. It is about generating funds with tuition dollars (large class size) and pulling in external funding of the type that allows the university to take a lot of it for overhead.

    Like

    Reply

    1. If we were given the tuition money we get, we’ll be fine. But we don’t have access to it. It all goes back to the state and the state decides how much we get. And it’s the weirdest system because the state creates all these different pockets of money that don’t communicate. If there is a huge amount of money assigned for, say, supplies, we cant move that money to an area that needs it more. There is a huge disconnect between people who actually make the university work and those who manage the budget. At this point, they are nit even telling us what we are to expect. The Chancellor and the Provost are clueless and through no fault of their own.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a reply to Evelina Anville Cancel reply