Funding
key to hire permanent faculty
By David S. Spence, CSU Executive Vice
Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer
If
the California State University system is
going to sustain high-quality education
for its more than 400,000 students, including
33,000 at Cal State Long Beach, then we
must continue to recruit first-class faculty
members to teach these students. The state
budget provides the basic resources to hire
new faculty as vacancies occur and to meet
funded enrollment growth. Changing the permanent
to part-time faculty mix will require additional
resources. In this difficult budgetary climate,
reduced funding is a key challenge we must
all face together.
The CSU, the statewide Academic Senate and
the California Faculty Association have
agreed to a plan that will mean more permanent
faculty and fewer lecturers on campuses.
If funded by the legislature and governor,
the eight-year plan will enable the CSU
to increase the number of tenured and tenure-track
faculty to 75 percent of the total faculty,
up from the current 63 percent.
The CSU’s current budget is still in flux,
with the governor slated to make at least
$750 million in cuts before the end of the
year to various state operations, possibly
including the CSU and its 23 campuses.
This year’s uncertainty has a bearing on
next year’s planning. The CSU Board of Trustees
will finalize its 2003-2004 budget request
at an Oct. 31 meeting. Besides requesting
funds for enrollment growth, we are asking
for $35.6 million in additional funds to
begin the process of hiring these additional
permanent faculty. Over the eight years,
it is expected to cost an additional $101
million to recruit and hire the new faculty
called for in our ACR73 plan. While we are
fully supportive of the plan, the state’s
budget woes are a sobering reality with
which we must collectively deal.
Currently, about 63 percent of the full-time
equivalent faculty in the CSU are tenured
or on a tenure-track, meaning that they
are permanent employees. The rest are primarily
lecturers, most of whom are employed on
a part-time basis. In 2001-2002, there were
10,029 tenure/tenure-track FTE faculty,
and 5,693 FTE lecturer faculty. By the end
of the eight years, if funding materializes,
there will be 16,854 tenure-track faculty
and 5,618 lecturers.
The CSU absolutely believes that it is important
to achieve an appropriate balance between
tenured/tenure-track faculty and lecturer
faculty for the benefit of our students.
We also believe it is the joint responsibility
of the CSU, the faculty and the state to
make the case for the funding that will
allow us to attain that balance.
To achieve the goal of the ACR73 plan in
eight years, the CSU must conduct between
1,800 and 2,000 annual faculty searches.
About 75 percent of all searches result
in an accepted offer, which means we expect
to add about 900 new faculty this year.
Even with the uncertainty surrounding the
state budget, the CSU, the CFA and the Academic
Senate believe that adding funds for new
permanent faculty is an investment in the
future of the CSU’s educational quality.
Everything we do must be in the best interests
of students, and this plan certainly is.
Starting now and for as long as it takes
for the state’s budget picture to begin
to brighten, we must all work for the resources
needed to attract these new faculty to the
California State University to teach our
first-class student body.
During
the last two years, at several California
State University system campuses, the California
Faculty Association held a series of teach-ins
on the future of the university. As
a result of the hearings and discussions,
the CFA presented a bill to the State legislature
that would increase the percentage of full-time
tenured and tenure-track faculty in the CSU
system.
In September 2001, the California Legislature
adopted that bill, ACR 73. In a ground-breaking
undertaking to implement ACR-73, the California
Faculty Association, the California State
University Administration and the statewide
Academic Senate collaborated successfully
and developed a plan to increase tenure-track
faculty appointments from the current level
of 64 percent to 75 percent of tull-time equivalent
faculty positions, over an eight-year period.
“The Plan to Increase the Percentage of Tenured
and Tenure-Track Faculty in the California
State University” reverses the trend that
has dominated hiring in the CSU, and nationally,
for the past two decades. The project and
the plan can be a model for educational institutions
nationwide.
The new plan is good for students because
tenure-track faculty are full-time employees,
responsible for student advising, have a long-term
commitment to the institution, and are often
engaged in research projects and creative
activities that involve students. Students
will have more and diversified access to their
teachers. The plan is good for the university
because full-time tenure-track faculty are
the ones responsible for program development,
curriculum revision, and who participate in
governance.
The plan is good for all new tenure-track
hires because they are eligible for tenure,
which is the sole guarantee of academic freedom.
This allows teachers to treat and discuss
controversial subject matter, important in
a strong liberal education. The
plan is good for lecturer faculty because
they will not lose their current positions,
and they will be considered for appropriate
tenure-track positions when they are qualified.
The CFA, the CSU and the Academic Senate share
the goal of bettering the quality of education
for the students in the largest public education
system in the country. Therefore, all
three parties are hailing the plan and ACR
73.
—
Martin Fiebert
chapter president, CFA
|
