Inside Iowa State

May 21, 2004

Allen: Tight budget forces university to rely on non-tenure-track faculty to teach

by Linda Charles

The tight budget situation has forced the university to rely more on non-tenure-track faculty to teach classes, vice president for academic affairs and provost Benjamin Allen told the Faculty Senate May 4.

"Clearly, we are relying more heavily on non-tenure-eligible faculty to do our teaching," Allen said. "This is not completely surprising, given our tight budget situation and economies in having non-tenure-eligible faculty teach.

"Given the logistics of the budget situation, I do not see big changes in the future," he said.

Two-thirds meet teaching cap

Still, two-thirds of the university's 60 departments met a university policy that limits teaching by non-tenure-track faculty to 25 percent of the instruction in departments, Allen said. Nearly a third of the departments rely on non-tenure-track faculty to teach less than 10 percent of their classes.

Departments over the 25 percent cap
Department	% teaching, non-tenure track faculty
Computer science Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication Foreign languages and literatures Agricultural and biosystems engineering Food science and human nutrition Community and regional planning Ecology, evolution and organismal biology Curriculum and instruction Genetics, development and cell biology Art and design English Philosophy and religious studies Music Mathematics Marketing Biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology Political science Management Health and human performance	61.3 54.0 48.2 48.1 42.4 41.6 39.6 39.5 38.4 36.1 34.2 33.9 32.2 30.4 30.0 29.9 28.2 28.1 25.7

The two-year-old policy also limits the percent of non-tenure-track teaching overall at the university to 15 percent, and set a five-year period to reach the goals. The overall university percentage this year was 24.4 percent, up from last year's 19.8 percent.

However, Allen noted, 95 percent of the increase is due to including professional and scientific staff who teach in the numbers this year. Last year, they were not included. Nineteen departments exceeded the 25 percent cap, with non-tenure-track faculty doing 25.7 percent to 61.3 percent of the teaching.

Allen cautioned against drawing long-term conclusions from the data since it has not been collected long enough to determine how much the numbers fluctuate from year to year.

National problem

William Woodman, sociology, said the problem can't be fixed when departments are told they can't cut sections or courses.

"In every other industry, when resources shrink, the output shrinks," he said.

Woodman also said a big concern is that non-tenure-track faculty don't have academic freedom. He said non-tenure-track faculty in the biological sciences told him they don't raise certain issues because "they know they're vulnerable."

He also said the raises merit staff have and will receive, based on their contract, has "cannibalized" the faculty. (Earlier in the meeting, outgoing president Jack Girton said the university might lose 50 to 60 faculty positions next year, mostly through attrition. Allen said the number would be somewhere in the 30s.)

Allen agreed the labor issue was a consideration, noting that some departments have been asked to cut back on merit and P&S positions.

Constance Post, English, said she was "shocked" by the increase in the number of departments over the 25 percent cap. (Last year, 11 departments exceeded the cap). She said when the senate passed the policy, it expected English, math and computer science to have difficulty meeting the cap, but not so many other departments. She asked how Iowa State compares nationally.

Allen responded that nationally, the number of non-tenure-track teachers is increasing.