Universities Benefit From Their Faculties' Unionization, Study Finds - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education
April 5, 2013
Universities Benefit From Their Faculties' Unionization, Study Finds
By Peter Schmidt
An unusual new study of the effects of faculty unionization on public universities—rather than on just faculty members themselves—reaches the controversial conclusion that such institutions generally become more efficient and effective when their professors form collective-bargaining units.
"Unionization contributes to lower budgets, higher graduation rates, and a greater number of degrees and completions," says a draft report on the study's findings scheduled to be presented on Sunday in New York, at the annual conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions.
Mark K. Cassell, a professor of political science at Kent State University, based the study on an analysis of 23 years' worth of federal data from 432 public universities compiled by the Delta Cost Project at the American Institutes for Research.
In an interview on Thursday, he said his study "tries to cut through some of the hyperbolic rhetoric" surrounding the effect of faculty unionization on colleges and shows "that unionization, on average, has a positive impact."
But one prominent researcher of higher-education unions, Stephen R. Porter, a professor of higher education at North Carolina State University, on Thursday described Mr. Cassell's analysis as unconvincing, in part because it had been conducted without solid data on colleges' administrative or faculty cultures, or the budget models such institutions use, or how such institutions tie faculty members' compensation to their productivity.
He said Mr. Cassell's methodology "doesn't really grapple" with the central question of how to take into account the role such variables play in college faculty members' decisions to form collective-bargaining units.
Measuring the effects of the unionization of college faculties is notoriously difficult. Researchers find it a challenge to rule out the influence of factors other than unionization, such as regional variations in the economy or the cost of living, or the myriad ways in which the leadership, culture, or policies of individual institutions can affect whatever variables are being studied.
Also complicating such studies is the added difficulty in establish causal relationships and showing which way the causation flows. It might be the case, for example, that dealing with faculty unions hinders college administrations, but it also might be that dealing with dysfunctional administrations makes faculty members more likely to form unions.
Mr. Porter of North Carolina State said there were intangible factors as well. "The major issue in trying to understand the effects of faculty unions," he said, "is that schools that unionize are different from the ones that don't in ways that we can't observe." He noted, for example, that the federal data from colleges that many researchers rely on does not contain accurate measures of faculty satisfaction.
More Spending on Teaching
Most previous studies of this issue have focused on the question of whether unionization leaves colleges' faculty members better off, not whether colleges benefit or suffer from their faculty members' unionization. Mr. Cassell's study stands out in terms of its focus on the effects of unionization on colleges and the large number of colleges covered.
He tried to isolate the effects of faculty unionization on such institutions by statistically controlling for their size, selectivity, and Carnegie classification, and for the cost of living, economic conditions, partisan control of government, and level of state regulation of higher education in the states where they are located. To try to tease out causal relationships between the factors studied, he examined the data over time.
His analysis found that having faculty unions led public universities to spend a larger share of their budgets on instruction, as opposed to administration. Over time, his paper says, universities with faculty unions consistently spent 2 to 3 percent less than others on administration, "a sizable amount given that university budgets often can exceed $500 million."
The paper says the higher spending on instruction at unionized public universities might help explain the finding that such institutions have significantly better student success rates, as measured by the share of students who graduate within six years, earn degrees, or complete some other academic program.
Stephen G. Katsinas, a professor of higher education and director of the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, said he suspects that having faculty unions might affect the composition of colleges' academic work forces, leaving them with larger shares of full-time, not part-time, faculty members than colleges without faculty unions.
Such differences in work-force composition, he said, might help account for differences in student performance, considering that other research has found that being full time leaves faculty members better able to advise students. While saying he needed more time to review the new study's methodology, Mr. Katsinas said Mr. Cassell "is to be commended for tackling a tough and important topic."
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
New Test for Computers - Grading Essays at College Level - NYTimes.com
New Test for Computers - Grading Essays at College Level - NYTimes.com
A system developed by a joint venture between Harvard and M.I.T. uses artificial intelligence to assess student papers and short written answers, freeing instructors for other tasks.
Could this be the beginning of online assessment tools for something other than multiple choice tests?
A system developed by a joint venture between Harvard and M.I.T. uses artificial intelligence to assess student papers and short written answers, freeing instructors for other tasks.
Could this be the beginning of online assessment tools for something other than multiple choice tests?
Michigan community college to transition to merit pay
By Carl Straumsheim
Michigan’s public institutions scrambled to approve new faculty contracts before March 28, when the state’s right-to-work law goes into effect. In the rush to ratify a contract two years in the making, faculty members at Grand Rapids Community College have accepted a deal that freezes their pay for two years and grants raises based on their performance only.
The new contract, valid through the 2015-16 academic year, moves the college away from seniority raises and institutes merit pay. Faculty members have in previous years received an automatic annual increase that could raise their salaries by as much as 8 percent, which has led to instructors being “highly compensated for their teaching” without any incentives to fulfill any non-teaching requirements, said President Steven C. Ender.
Under the new system, faculty members make themselves eligible for raises based on their performance in five categories: teaching, college service, student service, professional development, and community service. At the onset of every new academic year, instructors complete a plan documenting the expectations for the upcoming year, and the document is reviewed toward the end of the spring semester to track progress.
“This new evaluation system gives faculty members a large menu of non-teaching -- but academic -- services they’ll need to perform on a daily basis for satisfactory employment,” Ender said, adding that he hoped faculty members would be motivated to expand how they approach the requirements of their jobs.
Merit pay has not roused the same level of opposition seen in other community colleges, but some faculty members have expressed “anxiety” about how they are expected to satisfy the terms of the new contract, said Frederick C. van Hartesveldt, president of the faculty union.
"Faculty will have to do a lot more record keeping," van Hartesveldt said. "Whether they teach differently or not, I don’t know if we’re going to get that result."
The move to merit pay means instructors will face more in-classroom evaluations. The contract requires all faculty members to undergo periodic observations and have students evaluate the classes they teach every semester.
“I really believe that this new contract is kind of a defining moment for the institution as we build a total academic culture,” Ender said. “We’re 100 years old next year, and this is laying the foundation for our tenured folks for the next 100 years.”
Ender requested a compensation study after joining the college in 2009, which he said found faculty members were being compensated higher than the market dictated. By freezing pay rates, Ender said he hoped the market will catch up with the college’s level of compensation.
The contract also normalizes how faculty members are compensated for teaching extra classes. Starting July 1, both new tenure-track faculty members and new adjuncts will be paid $937 per contact hour. That change does not affect current faculty, whose rate will remain $1,189.
While faculty members are relieved to see an end to the negotiations, van Hartesveldt said the new system faced internal opposition before being ratified.
“The pay components create a two-tier system where returning faculty are better off financially than newly hired faculty,” van Hartesveldt, a professor of English, said. “Personally, I can’t endorse that.”
A late addition to the new contract requires faculty members to pay union dues. That means the college will avoid the right-to-work law until the contract ends after the 2015-2016 academic year.
Both Ender and van Hartesveldt said the right-to-work law itself didn’t force the two sides to come together -- an agreement was reached in May 2012 -- although it nudged them back to the negotiating table to ratify the contract.
“I definitely do not want to give the impression that we have won and the faculty has lost,” Ender said, adding that the new merit pay system could be “a demonstration model of a best practice in education.”
Van Hartesveldt also stressed the good working relationship between the faculty and the administration. “You can’t go to the negotiating table and make the other side do what you want to do,” he said. “From a faculty viewpoint, it was the best agreement we could reach given the negotiations climate.”
The new contract, valid through the 2015-16 academic year, moves the college away from seniority raises and institutes merit pay. Faculty members have in previous years received an automatic annual increase that could raise their salaries by as much as 8 percent, which has led to instructors being “highly compensated for their teaching” without any incentives to fulfill any non-teaching requirements, said President Steven C. Ender.
Under the new system, faculty members make themselves eligible for raises based on their performance in five categories: teaching, college service, student service, professional development, and community service. At the onset of every new academic year, instructors complete a plan documenting the expectations for the upcoming year, and the document is reviewed toward the end of the spring semester to track progress.
“This new evaluation system gives faculty members a large menu of non-teaching -- but academic -- services they’ll need to perform on a daily basis for satisfactory employment,” Ender said, adding that he hoped faculty members would be motivated to expand how they approach the requirements of their jobs.
Merit pay has not roused the same level of opposition seen in other community colleges, but some faculty members have expressed “anxiety” about how they are expected to satisfy the terms of the new contract, said Frederick C. van Hartesveldt, president of the faculty union.
"Faculty will have to do a lot more record keeping," van Hartesveldt said. "Whether they teach differently or not, I don’t know if we’re going to get that result."
The move to merit pay means instructors will face more in-classroom evaluations. The contract requires all faculty members to undergo periodic observations and have students evaluate the classes they teach every semester.
“I really believe that this new contract is kind of a defining moment for the institution as we build a total academic culture,” Ender said. “We’re 100 years old next year, and this is laying the foundation for our tenured folks for the next 100 years.”
Ender requested a compensation study after joining the college in 2009, which he said found faculty members were being compensated higher than the market dictated. By freezing pay rates, Ender said he hoped the market will catch up with the college’s level of compensation.
The contract also normalizes how faculty members are compensated for teaching extra classes. Starting July 1, both new tenure-track faculty members and new adjuncts will be paid $937 per contact hour. That change does not affect current faculty, whose rate will remain $1,189.
While faculty members are relieved to see an end to the negotiations, van Hartesveldt said the new system faced internal opposition before being ratified.
“The pay components create a two-tier system where returning faculty are better off financially than newly hired faculty,” van Hartesveldt, a professor of English, said. “Personally, I can’t endorse that.”
A late addition to the new contract requires faculty members to pay union dues. That means the college will avoid the right-to-work law until the contract ends after the 2015-2016 academic year.
Both Ender and van Hartesveldt said the right-to-work law itself didn’t force the two sides to come together -- an agreement was reached in May 2012 -- although it nudged them back to the negotiating table to ratify the contract.
“I definitely do not want to give the impression that we have won and the faculty has lost,” Ender said, adding that the new merit pay system could be “a demonstration model of a best practice in education.”
Van Hartesveldt also stressed the good working relationship between the faculty and the administration. “You can’t go to the negotiating table and make the other side do what you want to do,” he said. “From a faculty viewpoint, it was the best agreement we could reach given the negotiations climate.”
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