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1/ I have some thoughts (and links) on the downstream consequences of #faculty hiring freezes, massive #adjunct / #NTT layoffs, loosened admissions standards + institutionalization of online/hybrid #teaching. Your thoughts? Bonus pts for links to research!
2/ At all but the most research-intensive institutions (and to an extent there, too), _fewer_ faculty will be teaching _more_ courses in _unfamiliar modes_ to more students who are _less prepared_ than typical for their colleges.
3/ (This brief exchange among #highered economists @kevinrmcclure, @cant_b, @dhfeld1 + @rkelchen is helpful: https://twitter.com/kevinrmcclure/status/1244958833321140224).
4/ So, strategic, designed, deliberate #facultydevelopment will be more important to institutional resilience—survival—than ever before. As Rumsfeld (in)famously put it, “You go to war with the army you have.”
5/ Colleges now have some months to prepare that army for what’s to come. What happens this summer will be critical--and it ain’t (most) research, which colleges will be asking faculty to set aside.
6/ The good news: It’s cheaper to retain + develop than to recruit faculty, given extraordinary costs of startup, relocation, onboarding, teaching release, etc. Not to mention time on searches. As @JoanCWilliams likes to say, “It’s cheaper to keep her.”
7/ (See also “Half-way out: How requiring outside offers to raise salaries influences faculty retention and organizational commitment,” by @komeara2 of @UMDHigherEd: https://education.umd.edu/file/3578/download?token=FLefKPHb)
8/ Bad news: Colleges will be broke, AND the faculty we’re asking to teach more + differently to more + different students include the thousands who were on the verge of retirement + now can’t afford to. It’s hardest for them to change + they’re not leaving. (cf Rumsfeld above.)
9/ (There are lessons here from 2009. See “The great #recession and changes in #faculty expected #retirement age,” https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1007/s12197-014-9294-2. Also, work by @PaulYakoboski at @TIAAinstitute)
10/ Faculty will be #advising more #students + performing more service and service-like activities (revising curricula, assessments, etc.). These workloads are typically (a) distributed inequitably within the department + (b) not counted in RPT review.
11/ Without a departmental workload audit to address (a), and a change in the rewards criteria—for promotion, #tenure, reappointment—to address (b), then #faculty have no incentive to change their behavior.
12/ Those who “take one for the team” end up losing. They tend to be women and people of color. So yes, all progress on #faculty #diversity will halt, likely reverse, without concurrent RPT reform.
13/ The colleges and universities that will survive and even thrive in the coming year are those whose faculty are prepared and rewarded to teach, advise, engage, and inspire the students they have, not the student they _wish_ they’d have.
14/ Recommendation #1: Start coalescing your #facultydevelopment offices _now_ into a more organized, more strategic resource that will lead, not merely respond to, your faculty in the coming months.
15/ (Books that can help: https://styluspub.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781620362686/Faculty-Development-in-the-Age-of-Evidence, http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807752, + https://wvupressonline.com/node/758 by @joshua_r_eyler)
16/ Recommendation #2: This summer, organize your chairs/heads to lead workload audits in their departments. It’s time to make _who_ is doing _what_ transparent, before you ask them to do _more_.
17/ For too long, women and POC have been bearing more than their share of #service, #advising, teaching-proximate duties. Even #resilientfaculty have a breaking point.
18/ (Start with the Faculty Workloads and Rewards Project by @kaomeara2, @ajjaeger, @JoyaMisra | …https://facultyworkloadandrewardsproject.umd.edu/ | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30566472 .)
19/ Recommendation #3: In the fall, organize faculty leaders to revisit institution-wide reappointment, promotion + tenure policies to account for _all_ that faculty are being asked to do (excellently) for your college’s very survival. Disciplinary + learned associations: Help!
20/ e.g., shifting from a 3/3 to a 4/4 load, serving on a COVID response task force, rewriting undergraduate curricula, reenvisioning assessment...
21/ (I’ve been inspired by what @WPI accomplished before all of this: broader definitions of service, engagement, leadership, resulting in record #’s of amazing faculty promoted to full. https://www.wpi.edu/news/new-approach-recognizing-faculty-contributions.)
22/ I’ve left out several digressions and caveats--grad students, labor market, @AdriannaKezar, #neoliberalism, US News--but it’s Twitter, it’s Saturday, it’s the best I can do in the midst of a national fiasco. ( https://www.thisamericanlife.org/510/transcript ) Help me out here. What did I miss? /end
