UW Chapter AAUP
April 5, 2017
Statement
on Lecturers
Now, five years
after the UW AAUP publicly advocated for measures to improve UW lecturer job security
and working conditions, its time to renew university discussions. Much work has been done since that time
but several of the thorniest issues still remain, especially concerns involving
those who are referred to as part-time non-competitively recruited lecturers Over the last three years the ProvostÕs
Office has published several guidelines
relating to the hire and renewal of lecturers. These guidelines have received little faculty
notice and even less discussion. One essential prerequisite to public discussion
requires the administration to fulfill the ProvostÕs Tri-Campus Committee on
Lecturer 2014 Recommendation that it Ògather and report recruitment,
appointment, and reappointment data on full- and part-time lecturers in each
appointing unit, for the next five years at least.Ó If such data has been gathered, we
urge that it be made publicly available for discussion. Without such data we cannot know whether
current guidelines and policies are being adhered to, and if they are, whether
this has occurred through the creation of more benefit ineligible part-time
lecturers who work under conditions of extreme insecurity.
Background: In 2012 UW AAUP called attention to the
rising numbers of lecturers who had been hired into little understood non-competitively
recruited positions. Data
provided to the 2013-14
Tri-Campus Task Force on Lecturers shows that appointments under these job
classifications had increased from 108 faculty in fall of 2007 to a peak of 598
in the fall of 2013. UW AAUP
pointed to the UW
Faculty Council on Women in Academe [FCWA] 2010 survey report demonstrating,
the biggest problem facing Ònon-ladder facultyÓ involved job insecurity. Non-competitively hired lecturers are ineligible
for anything greater than one-year contracts and more frequently are hired
quarter by quarter. This might have
been less of a problem if people hired in this way thought of themselves as
short term employees, but as the FCWA report reveals, the majority of part and
full time lecturers responding to their survey had been employed at UW for more
than 3 years and 40% had been with the UW for more than 7 years. Similar findings were obtained
using a more comprehensive dataset provided to the 2013-14 Provost Committee.
In the immediate
aftermath of our 2012-13 efforts then Provost Cauce
appointed a committee to make recommendations. Subsequently the ProvostÕs office issued
several hiring
guidelines requiring that renewal for non-competitively searched lecturers required
competitive search within three. Those
guidelines have since been extended to include part-time faculty working 50%
annually. While AAUP has
always argued that the repeated renewal of long serving lecturers should serve
as an alternative to competitive searches, we understood that this was not a position
that the Senate was willing to take on.
In addition, we recognized that some pathway to security and recognition
was better than none. The larger
unsettled problem in the new policy, is that it leaves open the possibility of
systematic abuse of part-time lecturers who may be renewed in perpetuity under
very short-term contracts beyond which they can have no job rights to security,
promotion or procedural review.
It has always been part-time lecturers that have formed the largest component
of non-competitive hires. The importance of this fact is
underscored by the recognition that in some colleges and campuses, individuals
with less than 50% FTE teach as many as 4 courses a year. In other words, part-time lecturers may
teach as much or more than full-time tenure track faculty.
Earlier this
year the administration released data showing that there had been a reduction
in full-time competitive lecturers hired non-competitively, alongside a slight
upward tick in competitively hired FT lecturers. However, there has been no public
sharing of data on part-time lecturers. Without the type of report recommended
by the ProvostÕs Committee in 2014, we cannot know whether the institution is
moving forward or backward. In
short, we canÕt know whether lecturers will be pushed off 50% or greater lines
and into unprotected non-benefit earning lines at less than 50% FTE.
The issue of
non-ladder faculty surfaced as a confluence of two streams of events. On one hand, AAUP and the Senate have
both been concerned an accelerating decline in the percentage of tenure track
faculty that according to data given to the Senate, had fallen to 50% or less
across all three campuses. While
that fraction improves if one omits the Medicine school where substantial
numbers of faculty are on clinical appointments, faculty composition is notably
more problematic at the Bothell and Tacoma campuses. A second set of concerns focused
on the difficulty of achieving meaningful diversity its faculty in any
meaningful way. Many faculty are rightly concerned that
faculty searches be inclusive so as to provide as wide a set of opportunities
as possible for all communities.
These two
concerns collided in ways that prevented the solution negotiated at many other
campuses across the nation. Including
among these are the recently unionized campuses of Tufts University the
University of Oregon, University of Denver, as well as the University of
California system where collective bargaining establishes security and
advancement rights without triggering additional search requirement. Those campuses recognize that longevity
creates some entitlement to job security and, in meritorious cases, to promotion. While many of us believe our
requirement for competitive search is unnecessary for lecturers whose abilities
have been proven over a long periods of 5, 6 or more years is
counterproductive, we do recognize the importance of ensuring open doors for
underrepresented groups. We agree
completely that when faculty are hired without open and competitive search
under pressure of short term needs they should be expected to go through a more
rigorous process at the soonest possible moment. Thus, we agree with the impetus
for rules requiring new lecturers to undergo search within 3 years, and
many of us prefer to see that event triggered even sooner. As noted earlier, we recognize
that the Senate has little if any appetite for this battle and the President
and Provost are committed to their approach. Moreover, when it comes to full-time
lecturers, the early implementation of the search requirement means that there
are now few truly long serving lecturer still on non-competitively hired
lines. This transition has
occurred with considerable pain, anxiety and expense. One may simply ask the faculty who
have had to go through post hoc searches, the faculty who decided to leave the
university instead, and the faculty who have had to conduct the searches for
their positions.
As noted
earlier, unfortunately, the full-time lecturers are only a small
portionÑprobably 20 to 25 per cent) of all non-competitively hired
lecturers.
We are currently
in phase two of the policy changes with regard to search: These newly include faculty at 50% annual
FTE or more. As any good
economist would point out, under the guidelines currently in effect cash
strained Deans and Department Chairs, who has a choice between awarding a 40%
contract that can be renewed in perpetuity without the expense of benefits or the
formalities of search, has a strong economic incentive to reduce the FTE
percentage of those whose contracts are currently at or above 50% FTE have an
economic incentive to do so. These kinds of tradeoffs would have been
unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago.
They should be unthinkable today, but unfortunately the fact is that
they unless we maintain pressure on these issues, they are only unthinkable
because we choose not to think about them.