Schools, lawmakers cut sabbaticals to trim costs

[The Spartan]

AP through Yahoo News

Schools, lawmakers cut sabbaticals to trim costs
By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press Mon Dec 6, 5:34 pm ET

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Under pressure to cut costs, state universities and lawmakers across the nation are going after one of the oldest traditions in the academic world: the professor's cherished sabbatical.

Professors often use the paid breaks from teaching to write books, develop new courses or collaborate with colleagues around the world. But the practice is increasingly being questioned by critics who say it offers little more than a paid vacation at a time when other public employees are being furloughed or laid off.

"Why should the taxpayers of Iowa be paying to basically give these folks a year off from teaching?" asked incoming House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, a Republican whose party won control of the chamber in November. "It's as simple as that."

Some schools are reducing the number of sabbaticals awarded, angering faculty members who say their research and teaching will suffer.

The University of Iowa has already cut its sabbaticals in half over the last two years. Paulsen and other GOP leaders have proposed canceling them completely for a year.

At other schools, sabbaticals have been postponed or eliminated. Truman State University in Missouri abolished sabbaticals for the budget year that begins July 1 because of expected shortfalls, Provost Richard Coughlin said.

In Louisiana, Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal slashed higher education budgets last month. He said the cuts might prompt universities to reduce sabbaticals and "force professors to actually spend more time in the classrooms teaching and interacting with students."

And in Wisconsin, the incoming Republican leader of a legislative committee overseeing higher education wants to know how much sabbaticals cost and whether they are being used for worthwhile projects or as vacations, aide Mike Mikalsen said.

Julie Bell, who tracks higher education issues at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said it's not surprising cash-strapped states would review sabbaticals, faculty salaries and benefits, and the amount of time professors spend teaching.

"In this environment, everything is on the table," she said.

Defenders of sabbaticals, which are typically awarded every five to seven years, say some of the criticism stems from a misunderstanding of professors' jobs.

Professors, they say, are not just teachers but also scholars and public servants. Sabbaticals, they contend, are critical to advancing research, winning grants, publishing books and keeping up with the latest developments in their fields. Then professors can bring that knowledge back to the classroom.

"There's one word that explains why we're a city of literature, and that's `sabbatical'," said University of Iowa history professor Jeff Cox, referring to an award Iowa City received in 2008 from UNESCO, the educational and cultural arm of the United Nations.

Cox, who has used sabbaticals to write books on the history of religion, said humanities professors have been demoralized by the decision to cut the number of sabbaticals, a move he called political. He said he worried that younger professors would not be able to make a career out of both teaching and research like he has.

Interim Provost P. Barry Butler said the school responded to outside expectations to cut sabbaticals but defends them as critical to the institution's mission. The university plans to ask the Board of Regents on Thursday to approve 58 faculty leaves for the coming year, a slight increase after two years of sharp declines.

Defenders of sabbaticals object to Paulsen and others framing them as wasteful entitlements.

Professors at Iowa are eligible after 10 semesters of teaching, but they must come up with competitive proposals, which are then vetted by their colleagues. They also have to report on the results of their research.

Canceling sabbaticals saves money because schools do not have to hire temporary instructors to take over some classes. But it also risks losing grant money and productivity.

In 2009, Iowa professors wrote 26 books while on sabbatical, published 147 research articles, created and updated nearly 100 classes, and submitted 50 grant applications.

Karla McGregor, a University of Iowa professor of communication sciences and disorders, plans to take a sabbatical in the spring to travel to Australia to conduct research with colleagues, finish papers on autism and start a book about how children learn language.

"I do think it's essential for the productivity of the faculty and the good of the university to keep the sabbatical program going and strong," she said. "If you don't have a chance to study and stretch yourself in new ways, you are not bringing those new ideas back to the students, back to the university, back to the state of Iowa."

At Kent State University in Ohio, the university canceled all sabbaticals last year but has reinstated them with tighter monitoring after "kind of an uproar" among the faculty, said professor Donald Hassler, a member of the faculty senate.

"It hurts the whole enterprise of the university," he said. "You might save a little cash, but the values of the university would be damaged beyond the cost savings."

An official with the American Association of University Professors urged lawmakers to stay out of the debate over sabbaticals.

"I'm sure they feel it has great symbolic value," said John Curtis, the group's director of research and public policy. But "the whole purpose of sabbatical is to allow faculty members to do research, to engage in understanding new developments in their discipline and then to bring all of that back to their teaching."

On the one hand, I can understand cutting back (if not necessarily supporting full elimination) of such a thing when times are tough, but why the hell is it that, it seems, that whenever budgets are tight education is one of the first things, if not the first, the Republicans throw on the table?

Of all things, why that?

[Ryan Thunder]

Because nothing frightens politicians like a properly educated citizen not afraid to research their claims and unwilling to have their opinions spoonfed to them by pundits.

[spartasman]

Because it's a prime opportunity to give the finger to those Evil Liberal No-Good Snooty Elitist Smarty-Pants Liberals, that's why.

[Teebs]

I suspect it's largely that the people most heavily involved either don't vote very much (students) or overwhelmingly vote Democrat (academics/teachers and students), so in terms of keeping their own voters happy but needing to make cuts it's a sensible target for the Republicans.

[AMT]

Or, you know, its a system that gives cash for little productivity, and the important thing is that they teach, not spend time writing books.

I'd much rather they cut sabbaticals than teachers or classes.

[Teebs]

Or, you know, its a system that gives cash for little productivity, and the important thing is that they teach, not spend time writing books.

I'd much rather they cut sabbaticals than teachers or classes.

Perhaps it's because I went to a research heavy university, but I always had the impression that while teaching was both good and necessary academics' main job was to produce research. In the case of schools, I'd be more inclined to agree with you.

[AMT]

Or, you know, its a system that gives cash for little productivity, and the important thing is that they teach, not spend time writing books.

I'd much rather they cut sabbaticals than teachers or classes.

Perhaps it's because I went to a research heavy university, but I always had the impression that while teaching was both good and necessary academics' main job was to produce research. In the case of schools, I'd be more inclined to agree with you.

See, to me that sounds like a conflict of interest. A universities job should be to educate, not to research. Now if its a university whose curriculum requires research, then yes, it should have it, but not specifically for the faculty, but for the students, so they can learn the process as needed.

If a teacher wishes to be a writer, do what Stephen King did and write while teaching, until he didn't need to. Likewise, if you wish to be a researcher, then work in research. Don't teach.

Or, do both on your own time, if you feel the inclination.

[Zed]

You may choose what a university's job should be for all you want, but faculty's job, for centuries, has been to conduct research and teach - in roughly equal proportions. "Working in research", for many people - particularly the humanities - implies working at a university and teaching.

[AMT]

You may choose what a university's job should be for all you want, but faculty's job, for centuries, has been to conduct research and teach - in roughly equal proportions. "Working in research", for many people - particularly the humanities - implies working at a university and teaching.

Implication and reality can be two different things, and times change. And if one has to choose between research that can be done by dedicated researchers, or cutting classes or teachers down, I'll choose the research anytime. It can be done by others. Let teachers teach.

[Zed]

There's plenty of reasons why the two should be combined. A first is that, at least in the human sciences, it's difficult to find funding for senior full-time researchers - already, in the U.S., graduate students engaged in full-time research have to take up large amounts of debt. Combining research jobs with teaching jobs makes funding for research more likely. If you scrap the research element out of these teaching jobs, it's quite likely that research funding will diminish (particularly, as I mentioned earlier, in the human sciences). A second reason is that the current position of a university professor was developed with respect to the idea that a teacher at the highest level should be so immersed in the material he is teaching as to be an expert in it - only in that way will he continue being up to date with the new developments. By contrast, on levels of education where teaching and research are split, the knowledge disseminated is often outdated by decades.

It's also important to note that a lot of faculty wanted to become faculty - not "teachers". The fact that one has to teach as a member of faculty can be incidental; one often becomes a professor because one wants to do research, and sees a professorship as the best opportunity for doing this. Your claiming "let teachers teach" is hence disingenious at best, since I have no reason to believe the majority of faculty self-identify as teachers more than they self-identify as researchers.

[Simon_Jester]

That last is important. If we tried to segregate research and teaching jobs, we'd find an enormous number of scientists (and engineers, and historians, and so on) who would simply choose not to teach. The pool of available teachers would shrink, and the pool at the high end would become almost negligible: where are you going to find dedicated "let teachers teach" people who know quantum mechanics, or who are experts in medieval history?

The effort it takes to become competent to teach these things cannot be attained just by wanting to teach; that motivates people to teach high school, not to get a Ph.D. in a non-education field.

You'd end up with a two-tier system in which 'higher education' inevitably stopped at a relatively low level, for want of anyone to teach advanced and specialized courses. For people to actually learn anything complex, they'd have to go into some kind of apprenticeship system- which would limit opportunities to learn anything outside their own discipline, and greatly lower the quality of education produced by the university system.

In other words, college would wind up looking a lot more like high school in terms of what you actually learned from it.

[Eris]

Or, you know, its a system that gives cash for little productivity, and the important thing is that they teach, not spend time writing books.

I'd much rather they cut sabbaticals than teachers or classes.

I won't extensively touch on issues of why sabbaticals are necessary, as this has already been addressed, except to point out that not only is research a vital part of university function, but even if that weren't the case, sabbaticals support teaching as well. When do you think people get the time to write textbooks? It sure as hell isn't on weekends and evenings.

Well, also I'll point out that you seem to have this conception of universities as high school ++, something which is sadly widespread in this age where everyone is expected to go on to college, what with the lack of high school jobs, and the gutting of the trade schools. Suffice to say that the universities are the engine of our technological and scientific progress, to the point where receiving a graduate, and oftentimes even undergraduate degree requires significant institutionally-supported research. Y'know, the thesis or dissertation. Universities train researchers—how do they do that without researching themselves?

But anyhow, you seem to be in addition labouring under the misapprehension that sabbaticals are unproductive, a refuge for lazy professors wanting to get essentially a paid leave.

Excuse me while I go giggle in the corner for a bit.

*ahem* Let's take the institution where I myself work as a researcher as an example (the University of Arizona, a rather respectable public research university). To even think about applying for a sabbatical, you need to have worked there for six years in a tenured or similar position, and be in good standing with excellent reviews. You're not even going to be taken seriously unless you're a diligent and capable academic, and even when you take them they're strictly limited in time. You then apply to a three-member review board who will examine your specific and detailed proposal for your reason for requesting sabbatical time, and evaluate to see if your selected project has significant academic merit. Assuming you get in, which is not guaranteed even for good ideas, you will be then required to submit reports as to your progress, something which will make its way to the desk of the provost or the president.

The point is that sabbaticals are huge deals, things which are not given out lightly, and which are subject to strict supervision regarding both topic and productivity. Only a small percentage even qualify to try, the best and most dedicated is the theory, and only some of them are given the chance, provided they can prove they have need for dedicated research time, and not everyone is off on sabbatical at once, in order to ensure enough of the faculty are still available to fill departmental teaching requirements.

Suffice to say, sabbaticals are a vital part of having a healthy academy, and are things taken very seriously and carefully regulated to ensure they remain productive and useful. And honestly, given the state of our educational system, it's appalling to think that we're considering cutting back. We're slowly strangling ourselves to death, destroying the educated professional class that made the US the dominant world technological power. And we want to accelerate this process? How about we just cut some fighter jets instead, and start getting serious about revitalising the US educated elite?

[Glass Pearl Player]

@Eris: Now try to fit that into the alloted time for a news item at a broadcasting station of your choice. Or, if you like a challenge, into the attention span of a congress member.

There was a suggestion in this thread to separate teachers and researchers into two distinct jobs. IMHO, that can't work, it cannot even be done in principle. Why? Because someone has to teach all that hot new results to the teachers, so the researchers end up teaching anyway. Therefore there would be absolutely no gain in efficiency: I'd guess that those hypothetical "teacher courses" would have the same number of attendants as current lectures do, especially for those in advanced fields. Also, the promise "I never researched myself, I am a teacher instead, but I'll teach you how to research anyway" (to wich the suggestion amounts) sound ridiculous in my ears.

Or, you know, its a system that gives cash for little productivity, and the important thing is that they teach, not spend time writing books.

Same as above: The only ones who can write those books are researchers. Rembember, these are the books students use to learn from; many university level textbooks are actually edited and bound lecture notes (the stacks of sheets a professor wields menacingly when he steps in front of the students and teaches) that have been tried and found usable. However, actually bringing them into a publishable form needs lots of time. Also, some activities are done the faster the less interruptions there are, and I'd guess writing a book is one of them.

Third point: University research is mostly research into fundamentals, not product development (d'uh). We'll never know if a particular project will ever amount to something profitable or advance the wellbeing of the human race. Except by actually funding it, and every single project that will reference it. So unless one is completely content with the amount of knowledge amassed so far (a notion so unfunny I have to laugh at it), who's paying? Companies? They want short time profit. Rich Philanthropes? Few and far between, and they'll pay for their favourite disciplines only. Only the taxpayer remains, so taxpayer it is.

Oh, they want to cut funding for university research just for awhile? Guess where the good researchers went in the mean time.

[Zaune]

That last is important. If we tried to segregate research and teaching jobs, we'd find an enormous number of scientists (and engineers, and historians, and so on) who would simply choose not to teach. The pool of available teachers would shrink, and the pool at the high end would become almost negligible: where are you going to find dedicated "let teachers teach" people who know quantum mechanics, or who are experts in medieval history?

Should we infer from this that said enormous number regard the teaching of students to be something of a chore? If so, that strikes me as a rather strong argument for greater -but not total- separation of teaching and research duties.

[Questor]

That last is important. If we tried to segregate research and teaching jobs, we'd find an enormous number of scientists (and engineers, and historians, and so on) who would simply choose not to teach. The pool of available teachers would shrink, and the pool at the high end would become almost negligible: where are you going to find dedicated "let teachers teach" people who know quantum mechanics, or who are experts in medieval history?

Should we infer from this that said enormous number regard the teaching of students to be something of a chore? If so, that strikes me as a rather strong argument for greater -but not total- separation of teaching and research duties.

Zaune, I would imagine that teaching is something of a chore, even for those that really do enjoy it. From my own acquaintances in the field, I know that grading hundreds of mostly identical papers (and I would imagine that a large number of undergraduate papers are virtually identical, much less non-writing assignments) can be mind numbing. Even the most exciting jobs probably have their moments of tedium.

[Zaune]

That wasn't exactly what I meant. Sure, grading papers is a pain in the rear at any level of education; I know because I've done it*. I was referring to the professors who are much more interested in doing research and getting published than spending time helping the next generation of aspiring PHD students to understand the subject, and end up phoning it in. (This guy is likely a classic example.) Would students not be better served by having someone at the front of the class who doesn't feel he or she has better things to do?

* Full disclosure: I'm not actually a teacher, but my stepmother is headteacher of a middle school in one of the chavvier bits of East Dorset, and once paid me £20 to mark a load of Year 9 science SATs. Once was more than enough.

[Simon_Jester]

That last is important. If we tried to segregate research and teaching jobs, we'd find an enormous number of scientists (and engineers, and historians, and so on) who would simply choose not to teach. The pool of available teachers would shrink, and the pool at the high end would become almost negligible: where are you going to find dedicated "let teachers teach" people who know quantum mechanics, or who are experts in medieval history?

Should we infer from this that said enormous number regard the teaching of students to be something of a chore? If so, that strikes me as a rather strong argument for greater -but not total- separation of teaching and research duties.

Most people tend to concentrate on doing one thing if you give them the opportunity. If they have to make a conscious choice between finishing one more paper a year and teaching one class on quantum mechanics, a certain percentage of them will choose to teach... but a certain percentage won't. For that subgroup, it's not because they view teaching as an onerous burden, it's because they think of themselves as researchers first and educators second.

The community I'm most familiar with (the Ph.D. physicists and electrical engineers who work in my building) mostly seem to view teaching as a responsibility that you just, well, do. It's not "Oh boy, I love to teach!" or "Oh no, I have to teach!" They just... accept teaching as part of their responsibilities.

But given a choice, a lot of them will gravitate to what they see as the more interesting problems- whatever they're researching. That doesn't mean they'll be better off for doing so, or that the instutition of learning will get better results overall by doing so.

Zaune, I would imagine that teaching is something of a chore, even for those that really do enjoy it. From my own acquaintances in the field, I know that grading hundreds of mostly identical papers (and I would imagine that a large number of undergraduate papers are virtually identical, much less non-writing assignments) can be mind numbing. Even the most exciting jobs probably have their moments of tedium.

University professors often have minions grad students to do some of this, but yes, it's true.

[Zaune]

Thanks for the clarification, Simon. I still think that anyone who is genuinely uncomfortable with and/or just plain bad at the teaching aspect of a professorship should be able to concentrate on research, though the reverse should not necessarily be true; in order to teach someone something it's usually helpful to know how to do it yourself.

[The Spartan]

In an ideal world that may work, but the realities of university teaching/research is that you need guys that want to do only one or the other doing both. Otherwise you run into things like shortages of professors.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Or, you know, its a system that gives cash for little productivity, and the important thing is that they teach, not spend time writing books.

I'd much rather they cut sabbaticals than teachers or classes.

Perhaps it's because I went to a research heavy university, but I always had the impression that while teaching was both good and necessary academics' main job was to produce research. In the case of schools, I'd be more inclined to agree with you.

See, to me that sounds like a conflict of interest. A universities job should be to educate, not to research. Now if its a university whose curriculum requires research, then yes, it should have it, but not specifically for the faculty, but for the students, so they can learn the process as needed.

If a teacher wishes to be a writer, do what Stephen King did and write while teaching, until he didn't need to. Likewise, if you wish to be a researcher, then work in research. Don't teach.

Or, do both on your own time, if you feel the inclination.

Ok. Answer this. How exactly are we to do the following:

1) Produce more research scientists. The only way to produce researchers is to train them as graduate students,and for that you need faculty who actually do research.

2) Have good teachers. The best teachers at the university level are the ones with productive research programs. They also use the overhead from grants to fund classrooms and keep the lights on.

3) Not stagnate in terms of research. Universities do nearly all of the scientific research in this country--and in fact every country.

Universities were never designed for the teaching loads they currently have. What should happen is that the small teaching colleges should pick up the slack... or more ideally, law makers should not be cutting higher education by 5-12% every fucking term.

[The Spartan]

or more ideally, law makers should not be cutting higher education by 5-12% every fucking term.

Quoted for truth. I don't know what the situation was like prior to entering myself, but it seems that once tWat took office we decided that the one of the best ways to pay for tax cuts/tight economics/wars/new government departments/etc was to increase the cost of services that primarily only the middle and lower classes use or need government assistance to access. University education being the big one of those.

I can not, for the life of me, comprehend the level of short sightedness that would lead one to believe that this is a good idea.

[Simon_Jester]

Thanks for the clarification, Simon. I still think that anyone who is genuinely uncomfortable with and/or just plain bad at the teaching aspect of a professorship should be able to concentrate on research, though the reverse should not necessarily be true; in order to teach someone something it's usually helpful to know how to do it yourself.

They're not necessarily uncomfortable with or bad at it. But they do honestly have other things on their minds, which are (given the way universities work) more directly related to their career advancement and their status among their peers. It's only natural for them to think of that as their "real" work while teaching is something they do on the side, as it were. Again, that doesn't mean their bad at it; it just means it's not what they'd gravitate towards as their sole means of making a living if they had to choose.

There are exceptions, but not enough of them to run a university well.

[Flameblade]

Universities were never designed for the teaching loads they currently have. What should happen is that the small teaching colleges should pick up the slack... or more ideally, law makers should not be cutting higher education by 5-12% every fucking term.

B-b-but Alyrium! How else can Republicans ensure that education wasteful big-government spending is curtailed? Besides, aren't most well over-educated people less religious? Why in the world would they want that? No, it's much better to have fewer informed voters ivory-tower intellectuals and more brainless sheep good, honest Americans! And all that talk about America falling behind technologically, this is America, dammit. We don't need scientists leeches in our corrupt oligarchy free-market democracy! America is the greatest Third-World nation there is! Why do you hate America so much?


Caustic sarcasm aside, it's in every interest of the Republican party to see education be mauled in the US. It works better for the Business wing of the party, the Theocratic section, the Neocons and especially the section of their base that's turned into the Tea Party.