Campus Equity Week

This week is Campus Equity Week (CEW), a week of education and activism that draws attention to three of the biggest problems in today’s higher education system:  

1) Massive Student Debt.  National student debt has reached more than $1.4 trillion. Ohio is one of the worst states in the country for student debt, with graduates owing, on average, $28,000 in loans.  Student loans cannot be discharged by bankruptcy.  The prohibitive cost of higher education is leading to lower enrollment at Ohio’s colleges and universities, as well as lower graduation rates.

2) Decreasing State Support for Higher Education.  State support for higher education in Ohio has been on the decline since the 1980s.  If the Ohio Legislature continues to chip away at its support for higher ed at the current rate, there will be no state support at all by 2039.  Instead of choosing to fund necessary public goods and services like public higher education, state government leaders have pursued irresponsible tax cuts, which disproportionately favor the wealthiest Ohioans and provide little relief for middle class and poor Ohioans. Decreasing state subsidies coupled with “administrative bloat” have caused tuition to skyrocket.    

  3) The Exploitation of Campus Labor.  Approximately 75 percent of higher education faculty are working under contingent contracts. Whereas part-time faculty used to teach very few courses, today adjuncts teach over 40 percent of undergraduate classes, yet are paid far less than their full-time counterparts and receive little to no institutional support. In Ohio, adjunct faculty are not recognized as public employees and therefore do not have the same rights and protections that are afforded to full-time faculty under Ohio’s collective bargaining law. Even though a college or university is not obligated under law to bargain with part-time faculty, it is perfectly legal for part-timers to organize and have a collective voice, which the AAUP encourages them to do. This Wednesday, October 30, people all over the country will be wearing red to show their solidarity with and support of part-time faculty. Wear red on Wednesday!There are other small things that you can do to help make a big difference in bringing attention to these issues.  For instance, consider changing your social media profile pictures/avatars to the CEW logo below (right-click and save it to your computer).  You can also post some of the aforementioned statistics and use the hashtag: #campusequity. 

 Finally, you can read more about CEW and its history on the AAUP’s Academe Blog: http://academeblog.org/.

Kasich Taps Gee to Lead Study Group

At a press conference on Monday, October 21, Gov. John Kasich announced that recently-retired Ohio State University President Gordon Gee will lead a study group to examine college “affordability” and “relevance.”  

Kasich said that Gee will work with college presidents and leaders in the business community to find ways to better tie education to the job market while finding cost savings for students.  There was no mention of consulting college faculty or students, which is troubling given the implications such a study group could have on both constituencies.  

As the Ohio Conference AAUP has ostensibly noted in legislative testimony, letters to the editor, and other communications, the two most well-documented and agreed-upon causes of skyrocketing tuition costs are the declines in state subsidies and administrative bloat.  

Given that Gordon Gee was the highest paid public university president in the country, and often cited as a driver of the escalation of administrative bloat, one has to question whether Gee is the right person to oversee such an initiative.  The Ohio Conference AAUP plans to reach out to the Governor’s office and Mr. Gee to encourage inclusion of faculty and students as these issues are examined. We will keep our members apprised of any developments.

New GASB Rule Will Have Universities Deep in the Red

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) has released a new rule – Statement No. 68 – that will require public universities and other public employers to report net pension liabilities on their financial statements.  

Previously, pension liabilities only appeared in the aggregate under each pension system. However, GASB believes this change is necessary to improve transparency in accounting and financial reporting.  In the case of the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS), the new liability amounts will be large, and public employers will have a greater appearance of debt.  

While it is not yet completely clear how credit rating agencies will react to these new reporting requirements, Moody’s released a report outlining how this change will influence its ratings methodology. 

The Ohio Conference AAUP is a member of Healthcare and Pension Advocates of STRS (HPA), a constituency coalition that advocates on behalf of STRS beneficiaries. HPA will be working on communicating this new rule to the public, so it is understood that this is merely an accounting change, not a funding issue. 

Statement No. 68 will go into effect for fiscal years beginning after June 15, 2014.

In a September 30, 2013 letter to Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Director Michael Colbert, State Senator Nina Turner argues that there needs to be clearer standards by which unemployment claims from adjunct faculty are judged. 

You can read the full letter by clicking here.

Thank you, Sen. Turner, for your advocacy on behalf of the thousands of adjunct faculty in Ohio who simply want to be treated fairly.

McNay Testifies Before Higher Education Reform Study Committee

On Monday, September 9, Ohio Conference AAUP President John McNay delivered testimony to the Higher Education Reform Study Committee – a new standing committee started in the Ohio House of Representatives over the summer.

The committee has embarked on a “road show,” traveling all over the state to public and for-profit colleges to discuss a myriad of issues in higher education.
On September 9, the committee met at Columbus State Community College to address the topic of “Reducing the High Cost of Higher Education.”  “Faculty Workload” was a topic listed under that heading.
During his testimony, McNay explained, “The common assumption is that universities’ costs are so high due to the labor (e.g. faculty) that they have to employ…Yet the most recent data from the Integrated Post-Secondary Data System (IPEDS) reveals that between FY 2002 and FY 2011, Ohio’s institutions spent, on average, 29.5 percent of their operating budgets on total instructional compensation (e.g. salaries and benefits). Over the 10 year period, total instructional compensation declined by 3.9 percent.”

Citing additional IPEDS data, McNay went on to tell legislators that the real culprit of rising tuition and waste is “administrative bloat,” and that future discussions about reducing higher education costs should focus on reining in administrative spending and redirecting it to instructional purposes.  

Members of the committee seemed to acknowledge the problems of administrative bloat and the shrinking numbers of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty at Ohio’s institutions.  Vice Chair Christina Hagan (R-Alliance) asked for a list of recommendations from the Ohio Conference AAUP.  We will continue to update our members with relevant information about this committee. You can follow the committee and read other testimony that has been given by clicking here.

The death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor of French at Duquesne University, has sparked a national debate about the treatment of adjunct faculty. In the midst of this debate, Duquesne University is fighting back against unionization efforts of their part-time faculty. Below, you will find two items: 1) a link to an online petition that you can sign to show your support for adjunct faculty; and 2) a letter from OCAAUP Vice President Marty Kich to Duquesne’s Provost in which Kich voices his support for the adjuncts’ unionization efforts.

Click here to sign a petition to show your support of adjunct faculty at Duquesne University.


Dear Provost Austin:

I am a graduate of a Jesuit prep school and a Jesuit university. Although I have certainly had many reasons to appreciate the excellent education that I received at both institutions, the Jesuit emphasis on social justice has had, perhaps, the most profound impact on the course of my professional life. Specifically, I have committed myself increasingly to trying to insure that those who do the core work of instruction at our colleges and universities remain meaningful participants in institutional decision-making. I have worked to stem the continuing marginalization of faculty, demonstrated most pointedly in the increase in contingent appointments, both full- and part-time. I don’t believe that anyone committed to higher education really thinks that the current trends represent a positive direction for our institutions, that they provide a basis for a promising future.

Your university is not responsible for those broader trends, and it cannot by itself reverse them. But as a singular institution, as the only Spiritan university in the U.S., you do have a somewhat unique opportunity to make a salient, moral statement that might begin to reverse them. The adjunct faculty at Duquesne have voted to unionize through a legal process, and the university should respect the effort and commitment required for them to do so by entering into serious negotiations with their new collective bargaining unit. Even incremental changes in their compensation and working conditions can have profound ramifications both within and beyond your institution, especially if those changes result from mutually respectful negotiations. Your institution should view this circumstance as an opportunity, rather than as a conundrum, for it is indeed an opportunity to demonstrate that the value that your university places on instruction is a reflection of the core values on which it was founded and not just a facile talking point.

Sincerely,

Martin KichPresident AAUP-Wright State UniversityVice-President, Ohio Conference of AAUPExecutive Committee, Collective Bargaining Congress of AAUP