Despite its potential illegality, myths, misinformation, or whatever, I’m still planning on attending the budget forum meeting this afternoon at 2 pm in the student center. Ahead of that and after yesterday’s meeting, EMU-AAUP released last night a “Response to EMU Administration Press Release of August 25, 2010,” which is a PDF chart comparing the “myths” and “facts” of the negotiation process. (And BTW, I put those words “in quotes” for the same reason I put all sorts of terms, like “truth,” in quotes, since I question most absolutes. I’m a college professor, for “God’s” sake! No wonder I’m working on putting together a syllabus for a rhetorical theory class in the fall).
I looked around the EMU web site this morning and couldn’t find a press release (which is unusual– they usually make these readily available), but I did see this in AnnArbor.com, “Eastern Michigan University, faculty union far apart in contract talks,” which is a so-so article pieced together by various press releases, I think.
In any event, I think that the EMU-AAUP has some great data, but sometimes I think they “bury the lead,” as they say in the journalism business. From what I’ve seen so far, here’s what I would say are the key, “let’s boil it down to the highlights” issues of the negotiations:
- The faculty aren’t asking for a raise exactly; what the union is asking for is more an effort to break even after increased health insurance costs. And the problem is that the numbers the administration are giving faculty about how much that increase is going to be are still pretty fuzzy a week before the contract expires.
- If the administration is now going to claim poverty– that EMU doesn’t have enough in reserves, that the institution has to pass along the radically higher insurance costs onto faculty (and presumably other employees)– then why a) was the administration claiming less than a year ago that they were projecting a surplus, and b) why, why, WHY did we go with this stoopid 0/0/0% marketing gimmick?!? It struck me as risky and potentially irresponsible back April, and it strikes me as incredibly reckless now.
- According to data from the Higher Education Institutional Data Inventory– which, according to their horrible web site, is “is used by Michigan public universities to report financial and student information to the State of Michigan” and is used to “assist state policy makers in their decision-making processes”– Eastern Michigan pays less to faculty and more to administrators than comparable institutions.
Here’s the chart the EMU-AAUP had:
- According to EMU’s own academic human resources office, the salary of the top 100 administrators at EMU increased 8.7%, which outpaces faculty and which also makes the claim that there was an “administrative pay freeze” pretty dubious, and the numbers that were in the annarbor.com article about average administrator salary seem way too low to me, also based on some of the stuff that’s readily available via EMU academic HR.
And then there’s this whole goofy proposal about connecting faculty pay with increasing enrollment. Even the language I assume comes from EMU’s press release that the union highlights in its “Myth” column– “The administration is seeking to have the faculty share in the success of increasing enrollment as a way to bolster the faculty’s salary” and “The administration states its incentive package is tied to enrollment growth is unique and innovative”– sounds more like it comes from someone used to dealing with salesmen working on commission. I predict this is going to get taken off the table, but we’ll come back to this later if it doesn’t.
The one thing that was in the annarbor.com article that was not discussed in any detail at the EMU-AAUP meeting yesterday that I’ll be curious to hear/see if it comes up today is the proposal for pay increases for full professors: “The administration also proposes to include a provision that would pay a $5,000 salary increase to those who have been full professors for 10 or more years if they undergo an evaluation and meet various criteria.” As a full professor, I’d like to hear more about this proposal. Stay tuned….
As an outside observer, I’d say the Union has a persuasive argument with that chart. Thinking like a parent or a student, it also makes me think that GVSU is probably doing things right (they seem to have a good balance among services, admin, & faculty).
And two other quick points from a non-union faculty member:
1. Tying faculty salary to enrollment is a terrible idea, I agree, because what can faculty do to increase enrollment? Retention is a much more plausible metric as far as that goes, but faculty don’t recruit, don’t control ad budgets for marketing, and don’t admit students for the most part. So in a given year, enrollment numbers could go down (or be held down) solely by what Admin or BoR wanted to do or not do.
2. The post-tenure review thing is coming to all sorts of campuses. Here, where we already have merit review, it’s not a big deal. I will await with interest the reaction from the Union leadership and the rank & file, though, because this is clearly a way to start introducing merit into the equation for raises. (something I support, actually, for faculty for a number of reasons, not least of which are market-driven issues like a) salary growth/compression and b) disciplinary disparities in salary). Merit review provides a way to permit adjustments apart from one-time “corrective” actions to counter salary compression effects as well as providing a way for salaries to grow in ways other than a flat % increase that tends to preserve existing disparities (be they time or discipline based)