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Faculty Fallout

News Editor

Published: Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Updated: Tuesday, February 23, 2010

AAUP

Nate Batchelder

A series of unsuccessful talks between the UNH administration and the UNH chapter of the AAUP threatens to eliminate summer classes of an agreement can't be reached.

Last Friday, in a letter to the chief negotiator of the UNH chapter of the American Association of University Professors, President Mark Huddleston declined an invitation to debate the issues that are preventing the administration and AAUP from resolving contract negotiations that have been taking place over the past eight months.

Currently, 633 of the university’s full time faculty are without contracts, waiting for an agreement to be reached between their union and the administration. In November, the university offered a 1.5 percent salary increase, which the faculty then refused. Huddleston has stood by this offer, and since mediation failed in December, the two sides have remained at impasse. With this stall in negotiations, tensions continue to rise and, while not getting the response they want, the AAUP is threatening to boycott summer classes at UNH.

“Mark Huddleston is responsible for the negotiating positions that they’ve put on the table,” said professor Dale Barkey, chief negotiator of the UNH chapter of the AAUP. “He’s not been at any of the sessions, he’s not come to the mediation sessions and we still have not heard an explanation for the numbers they’ve put on the table.” 
In a series of three letters between Barkey and Huddleston, Barkey urged the president to address the faculty directly.

“The UNH faculty have been working without a contract for nearly eight months, and they deserve to know why,” wrote Barkey.

The salary proposals by the AAUP are based on a comparative list of schools agreed upon by both the association and university, a list that includes University of Connecticut, University of Delaware, University of Maine, University of Massachusetts, Rutgers University, SUNY at Buffalo, University of Rhode Island, and University of Vermont. While UConn and Rutgers both are experiencing a zero percent salary increase, four of the other universities are escalating their salaries by three percent or more.

“That list of schools got an average of two and a half percent increase for this year and that went into effect in July,” said Barkey. “The question is, why is our faculty at UNH worth so much less than at these other schools?”

According to an AAUP report on UNH, the university’s financial situation does not explain the small raise in professor salaries.

“In comparison with the distressed financial condition in which many of our comparator institutions find themselves, UNH’s financial condition is excellent,” reads the report. “The administration has argued that faculty salaries should be held down because of trends in state funding. Yet UNH and the state are faring far better than the majority of states in the Northeast.”

According to the report, UNH’s opening budgets project a 3.25 percent increase in revenue. This percentage equates to around $16 million for the university as a whole. While the university is proposing a 1.5 percent salary increase, which would amount to $59,602,602 between the 633 professors, AAUP is asking for a 1.7 percent increase, or a total of $60,344,208 for these professors. The difference between the two positions is no more than $741,606 out of the estimated $16 million in revenue.

President Huddleston, who was unavailable for comment, has yet to give a solid reason for the refusal to meet AAUP requests. Although he clearly states in his letter that he welcomes discussion between himself and faculty members, he cites legal restrictions as preventing him from pursuing these conversation as he wishes, thus refusing Barkey’s invitation. 

“I fully support genuine participation by faculty and the administration in shared governance,” he wrote. “Indeed, I have been frustrated by the legal restrictions on my ability to communicate directly with faculty regarding our negotiations.”

Upon this refusal, the next step in the process will be a fact-finding hearing on April 8. In line with New Hampshire labor laws, both sides have agreed upon a neutral third-party person to discuss their case and produce a report offering a possible agreement.

“The fact finders are an independent third party that assesses both sides’ arguments, along with documentation and back up information,” said university spokesperson Erika Mantz. “Then they kind of go off and come up with a report that will consider the sides and make recommendations. But the report is nonbinding, which means either side can reject it.”

Yet while the fact finder might bring an end to the disagreement, AAUP is ready to take all steps necessary to procure their end of the bargain if a settlement is not reached.

“The UNH Faculty Union will boycott the 2010 summer session if a contract settlement with the UNH Administration is not reached prior to the final scheduling of courses,” reads an AAUP advertisement run in today’s edition of The New Hampshire. “We strongly recommend that students investigate summer course offerings at other institutions well in advance.”

As professors take more extreme steps to raising their salaries, students worry about meeting requirements and question the integrity of the institution.

“I need to take summer classes in order to have enough credits to graduate by next May,” said junior Arielle Romano. “This is a university. We’re paying astronomically high tuition prices. I understand professors have to make a living, but they are here to teach us; it’s an honorable profession. It seems selfish of them to strike a semester of classes for an extra 0.2 percent increase in salary.”

However, the administration claims that negotiations will at no point affect the quality of education provided at UNH.

“Our focus right now is making sure that this has no impact on students primarily,” Mantz said. “We feel that the union leadership advocacy of a summer boycott violates state law and the collective bargaining agreement. We are committed to offering summer school this summer and that’s our number one priority.”

Yet state laws allow for summer semester boycotts, as professors are not required to work through those months.

“The state law does prohibit what are called job actions, so it would be illegal for us to go on strike during the school year,” Barkley explained. “But we are not contracted to work over the summer.”

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16 comments

Anonymous
Thu Feb 25 2010 15:08
Students should know that many UNH professors are not included in these negotiations, did not receive a pay raise this year, and are not likely to receive one even if union-eligible professors get one. This is because UNH employs a caste system where professors who have heavier teaching loads actually get paid about 1/3 less than union-eligible professors. In fact, starting salaries for many UNH professors are lower than starting salaries for elementary-high school teachers in 82% of New Hampshire school districts.

I feel for students who are paying more out of pocket or taking out bigger student loans to get an education, but students should know that very little of your tuition dollars goes to paying your professors. Many professors teach very large sections and have a low salary. If you divide their salary by the number of students they teach, you will find that these professors get about $30-50 of your tuition dollars each semester (you can double that if you want to include professor benefits: $60-100). Instead, your money is going to pay for the running of the university, which includes an over-staffed administration.

It is baffling to me that in the midst of rising tuition and stagnating pay for professors and staff, the university has decided to make athletics part of the core mission of the university and therefore a core part of its fundraising efforts. I think the administration should consider freezing or lowering tuition and rewarding professors before they start investing millions in athletics.

Professor Union
Thu Feb 25 2010 13:40
There seems to be an assumption in some of the comments that high tuition rates at UNH are the result of faculty salaries. Are you sure? As several have noted, tuition is "astronomically high." And, as another reminds us UNH "is a state school." BUT, the state of NH, however wealthy as measured by per capita income, is CHEAP when it comes to support of public higher education. NH is, and has been for decades 50th out of the 50 states in its support for public higher education. It is the grossly deficient level of state funding that necessitates high tuition for both resident and non-resident students.

I don't have the exact figures, but I'm sure some intrepid reporter can discover that, as a percentage of the total instructional budget, the cost of salaries for unionized professors has not gone up very much since the union was organized back in the early 1990s. Now, in fact, the administration is saving money on salaries by replacing tenure-track lines (once occupied by senior & experienced faculty who have left UNH, retired -- or been offered incentives to retire) with underpaid lecturers, graduate students, and adjunct (per course) faculty. This may not matter very much to those whose interest is mainly on the bottom line, but what happens to a university over time when it replaces experts with novices? What happens to the prestige and credibility of a degree from a university that slowly erodes the core of its permanent faculty? If UNH doesn't remain competitive, it cannot hire the most talented faculty. Sure, they'll be others who may be willing to take jobs at UNH. That might satisfy some of the complainers here. But, will students continue to apply to a school whose faculty consists mainly of those who took lower paying jobs here because the better jobs at other universities went to professors from stronger graduate programs, who published more, and taught better? Is that really OK with you?

Some with limited perspectives may say, "what good is research?" Well, the short answer is, without it we'd all still be living in caves and have a life span of 25 years. Almost everything you take for granted as a convenience or necessity of modern life -- how your food is grown, whether your cars are safe, whether your buildings will survive in an earthquake, whether your kids will learn what they need to get a good job -- are the products and results of research. Likewise, most of the important questions of the future -- whether energy can be produced without pollution, whether the polar ice caps are melting, whether cancer can be cured, whether our Founding Fathers meant for us to be safe from surveillance by the government, whether the enduring legacy of slavery can be addressed by efforts at racial reconciliation, whether new immigrants can maintain a cultural identity within a political plurality, whether a global economy will threaten jobs in NH -- will be answered by research, and most of it will be done at universities.

But all this is to point out that the problem of high tuition is NOT the result of salary requests by unionized faculty. Over the past 20 years, there have been times when the administration (really the trustees) raised tuition significantly, even when the faculty had been working without a contract (without a raise) for a long as two years, and even when that same faculty were teaching MORE tuition-paying students than in previous years, and generating MORE grant money (a consequence of research none of the commentators, except Clark Kent, have remembered to mention). It's true, do the homework and see!

The trustees don't need a new faculty contract to justify raising tuition, they'll do that anyway, and mainly as a necessity imposed by the paltry support offered to this institution by the people of NH and their elected representatives in the legislature.

Clark Kent
Thu Feb 25 2010 11:48
@Pro

You know what they say at people who live in glass houses right? If TNH allows anonymous comments, people are going to post anonymously. You can't call for them to use their real names when you and I don't either.*

If professors leave UNH because they don't feel they're getting equal pay, what is it that makes people like you and Phil (and so many others) think that other, equally-qualified professors are going to come take their place? Especially if the new profs are union members, they're not going to be interested in coming to UNH, when, as you said, they can get paid elsewhere.

I'm not saying it's a good time for the professors to be asking for a pay hike. There's very few times when educators can ask for one and not get criticized. But they've been working without a contract for eight months, and now obviously feel the need to put some pressure on.

Also, if you think your professors are unmotivated and not doing enough drop the class. If you think it's a university-wide problem, go to the registrar and unenroll. You won't get all your money back, but at least you won't be on the hook for paying for an education that you don't think is worth it. There are other places you can go to school after all. Research is part of a professor's job, and, yes, some prefer it to teaching. But research also brings money into the university in the form of grants and awards, which is good for everybody, so I find it hard to criticize them for it.

* I use my secret-online identity to protect the ones I love, because if my enemies knew my real name, there would be no peace.

Pro
Thu Feb 25 2010 11:01
One more thing, are any professors actually commenting on this? If they are, I find it amusing that they won't post their names with their comments.
Pro
Thu Feb 25 2010 10:58
I think that with these tough times professors need to realize that they are even lucky to have jobs. Many students are already struggling to pay the increased tuition for UNH (WHICH IS A STATE SCHOOL), it is not like we're Ivy League or anything like that. I love UNH more than anything, but there are far too many (but not all, thankfully) professors who complain about every little thing. I feel as though half my professors would rather be out in the field researching than teaching and if that is what they really want to do, than do it. Good luck and good riddance! I'm sure there are thousands of other people qualified to teach here without jobs. Having an unmotivated professor is the worst thing ever and it really makes those classes harder to get through.

PS: Someone wrote earlier that too many departments waste money here, how about Dining spending $32 each on those new salt and peppermills, I'm pretty sure those were completely unnecessary and one of the worst monetary decisions I have ever seen.

Stay classy professors.

Anonymous
Wed Feb 24 2010 18:06
I think it is ABSURD that the administration is quibbling over what amounts to $1,171 per person (under the false assumption that everyone on faculty would see an equal amount of the stated $741,606 that is the extra .2%. I am an out-of-state student who has shouldered the brunt of the tuition increases by choice, because I felt that the quality of education here at UNH was worth it. I am also trying to graduate this summer, who needs just 6 credits to get out of this bureaucratic hell-hole of a university. If summer classes are canceled, there is no way for me to get my degree. I can not take out any more loans, I have no more savings. I am graduating (supposedly) a year ahead of schedule because of my own hard work and planning. Faculty and administration quibbling over what is really a negligible amount is beyond insulting. It shows that they have no concern for their students, only for their own pockets. I think Wall Street is a better place for that kind of person, rather than a university.
Phil Heckler
Wed Feb 24 2010 15:41
I would challenge any UNH professor to go to one of the competing schools listed in the article.
Go see what your life would be like at UCONN, Rutgers or Delaware. See if you like those states, towns and school districts as much as you like seacoast New Hampshire.

As a student at UNH I agree with Anonymous post from "Tue Feb 23 2010 11:36", when he or she wrote that our tuition rates are "astronomically high". However, remember that tuition is (or last I heard, and I could be wrong) the largest source of income for the university. Therefore, the student body is fueling the massive machine of UNH.

We make the choice to attend UNH just as you, the professors, make the choice to teach at UNH.

If you feel as though you are being slighted, jilted, disrespected or undervalued, by all means, take your diplomas off your walls and go to an institution that thinks you are as important as you think you are.

If you got in to teaching to help mold minds, good.
If you got in to teaching for the money, shame on you.

Professors, please sign your paychecks, live your lives, and be thankful that you have a job.

Anonymous
Wed Feb 24 2010 15:28
Kick these lazyass crapbag faculty out on their overpaid asses. Fire the lot of them! destroy their footdragging greedy union. Hire some people who give a **** and get rid of the dead-wood. There's more than enough people to take their place, and qualified ones at that.

The gutless administration (who are mostly overpaid too, at least at the top of the food chain) need to man up, grow a pair of balls, and say: "Screw your so-called 'shared governance', no raises, that's that. Don't like it? Hit the road."

Professor Union
Wed Feb 24 2010 14:02
Ah, yes . . . name calling and stereotyping, the desperate and impotent strategies of those who can’t reason. Well “Anonymous” (09:26) I’ve lived in the real world, and actually HAVE made it on my own. The job I have now IS the result of risks I’ve taken, sacrifices I’ve made, and my own hard work in and out of the classroom. I had jobs at a grocery store, a newspaper, a bank, a radio station, and at a retail clothing store while putting myself through college. And, I live in the real world now, paying my own mortgage, property taxes, gasoline prices, grocery bills, and college tuition for my own kids.

You are terribly misinformed (or listen too much to Glenn Beck) if you believe that the unions are “socialist” organizations run by “big brother.” Are cops and firefighters socialist because they’re unionized? Are auto workers and postal employees socialists because they belong to a union? Are airline pilots and professional baseball players “socialist pigs” (your words) because they use collective bargaining to advance their interests against those of the managers, directors, and owners of the institutions and corporations for which they labor? We elect our leadership from among our members, and those who bargain on our behalf work next to us in the labs and classrooms of this university. The union IS its members.

And why must I be a “progressive?” Is it “progressive” to promote the operations of the free market? That’s what collective bargaining does. It tests the value of one kind of labor in a market of comparators. On the other hand, what do you propose? You want to hold down the wages of someone else (or even worse, you want the “big brother” administrators to do your dirty work for you) because you are unhappy with your own salary. Well, that seems to me to be a lot closer to socialism. It denies the fact that (in the “real world”) differences in education, training, and experience might be valued differently, be considered in a wider market, and so attract different levels of compensation. Who is easier to replace, a mechanical engineering professor or a mechanic? A chemistry professor or a cook? An accounting professor or a secretary?

Nobody denies the value or dignity of anyone’s work, in fact unions PROMOTE the value of all labor and the workers that do the work, and seek for them all a fair wage. But, differences in compensation simply (and rightly) reflect the market value of the specialized training members of the faculty possess. I’d like to make $8 million per year, but I can’t hit a fastball, or throw one either. Does that mean baseball players are “screwing” me because they earn what the market will pay?

But, you are naive if you imagine that your current economic troubles are the fault of the UNH faculty. Don’t be so gullible as to believe that if the administration refuses to pay the faculty that YOU will get a raise. Wake up and join a union, and if you are afraid that it’s a socialist plot, then run to be an officer of the union and do the work yourself.

Anonymous student
Wed Feb 24 2010 13:42
I support the faculty on this one. The university has the money to give, based on the numbers presented in this article. If the concerns here are for the university budget, then perhaps the administration itself needs to become more efficient. Having spent nearly three years here so far, and having worked in a university office, I have seen plenty of places that money is spent unnecessarily (for example, Housing doesn't need to print 11x17 posters on tagboard to hang in the dorms). Additionally, many administrators are extraordinarily well-paid. I'm not necessarily saying these employees don't deserve their high salaries, but rather that the university can afford to satiate the professors if they can fatten the admins.
Anonymous
Wed Feb 24 2010 09:26
Professor Union is why they need a union. Screw everyone! No experience in life and scared to death to make it on thier own. They need big brother union to eat. Selfish, arrogant. pompous jerk. The majority of Staff did not unionize because we don't want some socialst pig telling us what to do. But then most of us have seen the real world and knopw how life works outside of academia. Funny how all you progressives love the little man until it might hurt YOUR POCKET! Take your raise and chike on it. We will cover your behinds AGAIN!
Professor Union
Tue Feb 23 2010 18:11
Staff people whine about their low salaries, but when they had the opportunity to unionize, and to protect their interests and get themselves a place at the bargaining table (something the UNH Faculty union strongly supported) they balked. Because you were too afraid to stand up for yourselves and organize, you have nothing left to do but bitch about the gains made by those who did organize, who DO have collective bargaining, and who are NOT obliged to depend on the good graces of the administration for whatever crumbs they may be willing to drop your way from their bloated administrative budget. Stop your complaining and organize! Get your own union. OR, if you want to earn faculty salaries, go back to school, take on the college loans, delay earning a real living for a decade, apply for a job at a university, publish research, teach, get tenure, and join the faculty UNION! I guess everyone is a free-market capitalist except when someone in the LABOR force tests that market. As long as the bosses get to call the shots, the free market is great. But when the employees look to the market to improve their position, its a quick retreat to socialist principles. Everyone should earn the same regardless of training, education, experience, or merit. "Take what you get from big brother, and be happy you have a job,” they’ll say. And let's clarify something else: Summer teaching is non-contract employment. Whether a faculty member elects to teach or not is strictly a matter of choice. It is not a STRIKE to choose not to take on extra summer work, just as it's not a strike if you elect not work nights at Wal-Mart. Most faculty members NEVER teach in the summer. Those who do usually have done so for economic, not academic, reasons. No faculty member is obligated to teach a summer course, and it is the University (not the faculty member) who benefits the most from the summer teaching schedule (just do the math). Students all want quality education, and a degree with credibility. But, how long will that dream last with a faculty made up increasingly of inexperienced lecturers, adjunct instructors? The number of tenure-track faculty has not increased in 20 years, yet the number of tuition-paying students HAS increased a lot. So, who (other than tenure-track faculty) are teaching all those students? What you pay faculty has a direct impact on the quality of the faculty you end up with. THAT’S THE FREE MARKET, PEOPLE! Oh, and it's that same free market that gets Dick Umile and Mark Huddleston THEIR salaries, too. But, I notice no staff people are embarrassed to have THEM as colleagues, and no editorials denounce them as being "out of line." If they can get it on the open market, more power to them.
Anonymous
Tue Feb 23 2010 11:36
I agreed wholeheartedly with the previous comments. I am a staff member here, and have been since my days as a student. Together with my time as a student, I have given to this university for 13 years. CONSTANT throughout that time has been the battle between Admin and AAUP. I, for one, am tired of it. The staff at this university have ALWAYS supported Admin and "taken it on the chin" quietly. We have our benefits and pay slashed all the time... and we don't complain about it (though we should). We understand that you can't get blood from a stone. Why do Faculty not understand this? Yes, the University has $$$. But it comes from our students, who are already paying astronomical rates for tuition. At least the staff here are willing to take the brunt of the negative financial changes in an effort to protect the students. So, I guess my question for the Faculty is - why can't you care about YOUR students as much as we do? I suppose, though, the answer may be Admin's habit of seeking out faculty who only want to research, and only teach begrudgingly... perhaps that's the bigger problem - the university's habit of hiring professors who don't care to profess.
Anonymous
Tue Feb 23 2010 09:26
This angers me as a staff member who has been working here for 11 years; all faculty do is complain about their salary and how much they are overworked and have no resources; have any of you tried to live on a salary of $25k with a family of four? My husband lost his job in August; he was the primary source of income while I hold the medical benefits which we need desperately since my son has cancer.

We were told by the Trustees that any non-union employee making less than $40k would receive a 1.5 percent raise (not positive about the increase percentage) however we were later told that no one would receive an increase due to budget crisis; operating staff are the lowest paid employees on campus who continually take on the chin with decreases in benefits and less than cost of living raises each year; it is now rumored that even more of our benefits will be taken away so the system can save money; here is an idea how about taking some of the benefits or salary increases away from Administration???

Faculty are just being selfish, yes everyone would like to be paid what they are worth, and yes faculty did spend longer pursuing their education and worked for their degree, I too worked hard just not on a piece of paper, I chose to go out into the business world with my simple degree and start making money. If faculty are so interested in making more money and being treated better, than go get a job at all the wonderful schools you compare UNH too!

Anonymous
Tue Feb 23 2010 09:10
They are overpaid in the first place!
~Keith B
Tue Feb 23 2010 05:54
Imagine if the rest of the University employees said, "STRIKE" when we didn't get our raises. No UNH staff members have recieved our annual cost of living, or merit, increases. Originally, all employees making under $40,000 / year were supposed to get our increase, but because of the budget at UNH, we still have not recieved it. The faculty are actually scheduled to recieve a raise, and their defiance over .2%, when so many of us who need the money to deal with the rising cost of living, is a slap in the face to the rest of us. It's disgraceful, in such an economic climate where so few people even have jobs, that the UNH Faculty would even think of striking this matter. Take your increase, consider yourselves lucky, and stop whining! HOW EMBARRASSING FOR THE AAUP!






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