Posted on 02/09/2015 12:03:36 PM PST by Academiadotorg
The governor of Wisconsin has provoked the ire of the higher education establishment in the state by suggesting that professors on the state payroll spend less and work more. "In the future, by not having the limitation of things like shared governance, they might be able to make savings just by asking faculty and staff to consider teaching one more class a semester," Governor Scott Walker told reporters at the Madison hotel. "Things like that could have tremendous impact on making sure we have an affordable education for all of our UW campuses at the same time we maintain a high-quality education."
The “shared governance” that the governor referred to is a cherished perk faculty get in which they can literally share in university decision-making with college presidents. Yet and still, the teacher work loads are a sensitive subject with the professoriate.
“Word of Walker's remarks about faculty teaching loads needing to be heavier prompted UW-Madison to release a faculty workload survey from February 2014,” Karen Herzog reported in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “The survey yielded 191 full responses from biological sciences, humanities, physical science and social studies departments, according to UW-Madison.”
“Of those who responded, 96% said they teach, supervise and mentor undergraduate students and spend an average of 14.2 hours per week instructing undergraduates and an average 4.2 hours per week advising and mentoring. All reported research activities as part of their work, with an average of 8.4 hours per week spent on research/creative work with students. The total time spent with research, scholarship or creative work was an average 21.3 hours per week.”
Thus by their own rather elastic definition, professors in the University of Wisconsin system spend 26.8 hours a week teaching or involved in teaching-related activities. That’s way short of the 40 hours a week most of us are used to working.
As for the 12.9 hours of “research/creative time” that they get to themselves: Most of us have to do that off the clock.
For the amount they’re paid and benefits, they should be working no less than 48 hours a week.
I am sure they will present some newly found time cards that were stuck in the back of a file cabinet to prove they work 60-hours a week.
I would think that comparing public school professors to private college professors would reveal a huge discrepancy, with the private college professors putting in far more hours of teaching time. It would be interesting to see a study.
“Thus by their own rather elastic definition, professors in the University of Wisconsin system spend 26.8 hours a week teaching or involved in teaching-related activities. That’s way short of the 40 hours a week most of us are used to working.
As for the 12.9 hours of “research/creative time” that they get to themselves: Most of us have to do that off the clock.”
I like AIA, but this passage nullifies any understanding AIA may have and really makes their analysis moot.
They don’t know what they are talking about.
And, it is a bit of a slam dunk, but they missed it.
Our next great President.
I would like to thank Gov. Walker for making this an issue.
Every state should look into this.
What's the average salary and benefits?
If you're at a research university, you spend a lot more time on research and with graduate students than with undergraduates: that's why it's called a "research" university.
It's easy to whip up resentment against the tenured faculty who are not, in fact, responsible for the enormous run-up in higher education costs. Here are some real proposals for reducing state higher ed expenses:
a) Legislate a reduction in the proportion of administrative staff to what it was 20 years ago. I've seen charts showing an almost 400% bloat in administrative staff over the past 20 years-- does anyone know what useful work these people are doing? I and and my wife have spent 25 years on the low end of the academic totem pole, and we have no idea what all these administrators do.
b) Community colleges and many mid-level state colleges have to offer remedial classes to incoming students: charge these costs back to the local school districts from which these ignoramuses graduated. It's a two-for-one: see how much cost you can squeeze out of the system and how quickly the wretched local schools scramble to improve performance.
c) set a limit on how often students can change majors and how long they can take to graduate.
c) legislate real entrance exams that simply remove the 30% of students who are too poorly trained or motivated to be in college
d)If you want more contact hours with real professors, take some of the savings and hire more full-time faculty from the pool of academic serfs known as adjuncts.
Good Job Gov. Walker!
Sir Scott...Dragon Slayer. I love this guy!
Wisconsin has 26 4 year campuses and 26 2 year (satellite campuses). It also has 49 technical college campuses throughout the state. If every single instructor would teach one more course It is also ironic that a 4 year degree takes more than 4 years to complete. Eliminate some of the prerequisite courses and the remedial math and English courses should not be readily available. The secondary education (high schools) should have students whom can read write, do mathematics, algebra, calculus and trignometry prior to graduation.
From the article:...26.8 hours a week teaching or involved in teaching-related activities...
Leaving by your desideratum 21.2 hours per week to spend on the other duties of a university professor: the conduct of research or scholarship in their discipline (or production of art for those in the arts), plus the administrative duties (usually called "service") that faculty have under shared governance -- and no giving things like admissions decisions for graduate programs, retention decisions for students in graduate programs, policy-making about course and degree requirements, promotion and tenure decision for junior colleagues, and so forth, to professional administrators would not improve education -- the reviewing of research and scholarship of other faculty, and, for some of the faculty at land-grant universities, extension work.
Faculty involved in agricultural extension might well spend no time on teaching or teaching related activities -- since extension is not considered teaching -- as might faculty who have pulled in research grant large enough to buy out their teaching, and those are usually faculty in the hard sciences or engineering, not the politicized social sciences or humanities that provide the reasonable basis for most FReepers animosity toward turn-of-the-21st-century academe.
As I've said before, Walker doesn't want Wisconsin to have universities, he wants his state to have trade schools called "universities". Conservatives should approach higher education with the view of restoring the university as one of the great institutions of Western Civilization, not completing the destruction already wrought on it by the left.
The point of a university is to be taught by faculty who are actually advancing human knowledge, not just passing on accumulated knowledge, and that means faculty who have job descriptions that include a lot more than teaching and "teaching related activities."
For sure there would a lot of tail feathers plucked out, to judge from the squawking that would result. Those preening peacocks that professors with tenure have become are long overdue to be called to accountability for their lack of work ethic, critical thinking, and consciousness of the public they are supposed to be serving.
Perhaps a good idea that some of these highly paid academics are NOT teaching more hours in the classroom, though, considering some of the arrant nonsense they preach from the podium. Bad enough they are getting research grants to produce papers that support these didactic authoritarian creeds.
I think even Cruz signed on to this.
Hey, Balding_Eagle, nice to see you!
“The point of a university is to be taught by faculty who are actually advancing human knowledge, not just passing on accumulated knowledge, and that means faculty who have job descriptions that include a lot more than teaching and “teaching related activities.” “
They aren’t ‘advancing’ much human knowledge if they only work part-time.
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