There was a dinner party last night for a distinguished economist who had retired last summer. Now he and his wife, a distinguished academic in her own right, are leaving the community. (Their house will be on the market in the spring, if you are looking for a stately place in Urbana.) I haven't hung around people in the department for quite a while. So I got caught up on some pretty basic stuff that's been this way for a quite a while. In other words, what I'm reporting below is not new. It's just new to me.
When I started in 1980, the standard teaching load was 2 and 2, meaning 2 courses in the fall and 2 in the spring. There was some expectation that one course would be at the graduate level and the other at the undergraduate level. As part of my starting package (my 9-month salary was $19,500), I had a a one-course buyout the first year. This was to help me get my research program underway, pretty standard for new assistant professors. I also received a guaranteed 2/9ths for summer money the following summer.
Now let's fast forward to the present. The standard teaching load for tenured faculty is 3 courses. As there is a professional Masters program in the department now, for many faculty all 3 courses are at the graduate level. And for assistant professors, the standard load is 2 courses, the full time they are in that rank. (I believe the starting salary of a new assistant professor in Economics is around $125,000, though I may be off a little in that assessment.)
It was explained to me, and I'm sure this is true, that these changes in teaching load were necessitated to keep up with universities elsewhere. I want to note that way back when, Northwestern also had a 4-course teaching load, but those were 4 quarter courses. So faculty taught two out of the three quarters but had no teaching obligation in one quarter and could devote that time fully to research. My understanding of why NU had quarters was precisely to support the research function in this way. Fast forward to now and you see the consequences of schools with ample revenues and endowments having competed down the teaching obligation creating a spillover effect on public universities, which want to vie for the same faculty but do so with a much weaker revenue base.
Here are two related factors to consider in looking at these numbers. First is the size of the tenured and tenure track faculty in Economics. Back in 1980, that was around 55 FTE. (Many faculty had joint appointments with other units so were counted as fractions in Economics.) Now there are about 25 FTE. The department has many non-tenure track faculty for teaching and utilizes retirees (like me) in undergraduate teaching, but also core courses (particularly intermediate microeconomics) are taught in much larger sections.
The other factor is the source of revenues. Way back when, tuition at the U of I was quite modest and U.S. News and World Report would rank us as a "best buy" among universities. The bulk of the revenue then was coming from state tax dollars. Now tuition, particularly undergraduate tuition, is a major source of revenue. This is partly from increased tuition rates (and increased fees). It is also partly from increased enrollments, which are up at least 25%. The final factor is the composition of those enrollments. There are many more out-of-state/international students, who pay a tuition at a much higher rate. We were upwards of 92% in-state when I started. Now, I believe we're under 80%. (These facts can all be ascertained at the Division of Management Information Web site. But this being a Sunday afternoon, I'm being sloppy and doing it from recall.)
One wants to know whether the situation is stable, as is, or if there is too much tension and it will result in fracture of some sort. I don't know. But suppose that a group of people in the know forecast that fracture was likely. Can Higher Ed at the research university level reform itself in a sensible way to prevent that outcome? And, if so, what would such reforms look like? Who is asking questions like this?
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