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 Provost’s 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 Provost’s Tri-Campus Committee on Lecturer 2014 Recommendation that it “gather and report recruitment, appointment, and reappointment data on full- and part-time lecturers in each appointing unit, for the next five years at least.” 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 “non-ladder faculty” 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 Provost’s 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 Provost’s Committee in 2014, we cannot know whether the institution is moving forward or backward. In short, we can’t 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 portion—probably 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.