(If you’re just tuning in today, you may want to catch up on Part 1 and Part 2)
Back to our equation: X = aϒ/(b+c), where “X” is the total number of credit hours a professor must teach each year (a credit hour here meaning one student sitting in one course for one term), “ϒ” is average compensation per professor, “a” is the overhead required to support each professor, “b” is the government grant per student credit hour, and “c” is the tuition revenue per credit hour.
I noted in Part 1 of this series that most profs don’t actually teach the 235 credit hours our formula implied. Partly that’s because teaching loads aren’t distributed equally. Imagine a department of ten people, which would need to teach 2350 credit hours in order to cover its costs. If just two people teach the big intro courses and take on 500 credit hours apiece, the other 8 will be teaching a much more manageable 169 credit hours (5 classes of under 35 students for those teaching 3/2).
Now, while I’m talking about class size, you’ll notice that this concept isn’t actually a factor in our equation – only the total number of credit hours required to be taught. You can divide ‘em up how you want. Want to teach 5 courses a year? Great. Average class size will be 47. Want to teach four courses? No sweat, just take 59 students per class instead. It’s up to you.
When you hear professors complain about increased class sizes, this is partly what’s going on. As universities have reduced professors’ teaching loads (to support research, natch) without reducing the number of students, the average number of students per class has risen. That has nothing to do with underfunding or perfidious administrators; it’s just straight arithmetic.
But there is a way to get around this. Let’s say a university lowers its normal teaching load from 3/2 to 2/2, as many Canadian institutions have done in the last two decades. As I note above, there is no necessary financial cost to this: just offer fewer, larger courses. Problem is, no university that has gone down this path has actually reduced its course offerings by the necessary 20% to make this work. Somehow, they’re still offering those courses.
That “somehow” is sessional lecturers, or adjuncts if you prefer. They’ll teach a course for roughly a third of what a full-time prof will. So their net effect on our equation is to lower the average price of academic labour. Watch what happens when we reduce teaching loads from 3/2 to 2/2, and give that increment of classes over to adjuncts.
(.8*150,000) + (.2*50,000) = $130,000
X= 2.27($150,000)/($600+$850) = 235
X= 2.27(130,000)/($600+$850) = 195
The alert among you will probably note that the fixed cost nature of “a” means that it would likely rise somewhat as ϒ falls, so this is probably overstating the fall in teaching loads a bit. But still, this result is pretty awesome. If you reduce your faculty teaching load, and hand over the difference to lower-paid sessionals, not only do you get more research, but the average teaching load also falls significantly. Everyone wins! Well, maybe not the sessionals, but you get what I mean.
This underlines something pretty serious: the financial problems we have lay much more on the left side of the equation than on the right side. However much you think professors deserve to be paid, there’s an iron triangle of institutional income, salaries, and credit hours that cannot be escaped. If you can’t increase tuition, and more government money isn’t forthcoming, then you either have to accept higher teaching loads or lower average salaries. And if wage rollbacks among full-time staff isn’t in the cards, then average costs are going to be reduced through increased casualization. Period.
Or almost, anyway. To date we’ve focused just on ϒ – but what about “a”? Can’t we make that coefficient smaller somehow?
Good question. More tomorrow.
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Can you explain 3/2 and 2/2?
We’ve seen the same casualization in the Ontario community colleges, and I assume elsewhere, but as far as I know, the teaching loads for full time faculty have not dropped.
Courses per term. 3/2 means teaching 3 courses one term and 2 the next. Most of the big drops in teaching loads in Canada happened before 2005.
Great series, Alex! Teaching load now for FTF for a lot of universities in Ontario is, in general, 2/2 and 0.5 of that is a graduate seminar with less than 15 students.
Thanks Arturo.
That works as long as they;re teaching 3 other classes of 60 people…
My patience has paid off! I’m just wondering what you have down for the course stipend for the sessionals in this equation (my numbers indicate an average of between 5k-8k in Canada). I think in order to put an even finer touch on the equation, you might have to factor in TAs as part of the cost mechanism for larger undergrad service courses. If a faculty member – FT or PT – has x number of TAs, not all of the money used to pay TAs comes from grants (external or internal), and so the department has to eat that. But this also distributes teaching load hours a bit differently since one then has to consider the tutorial hours as a portion of teaching credit hours, etc. There may be more than just a nominal difference between Prof X who teaches four courses of 50 on her/his own, and Prof Y who teaches one course of 200 with six TAs to carry some of the marking and teaching load. But, just as important here would be the overall cost to deliver a huge 1st year course if faculty salary is identical to an upper year course + having to pay TAs.
Dude. Its a blog. There are limits on how much time I;m prepared to devote to this. (though, you know, if you want to try playing with these equations yourself, I’d probably publish the results).
Re: costs. If you assume $150K per prof and they teach 3/2 (i know, I know) then you get $30K per course. I’m assuming a sessional costs 10K per course once you figure in EI/CPP/benefits (such as they are) – hence one-third of what a prof costs. Very back of the envelope.
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Alex — very interesting discussion. But aren’t the costs for sessionals part of a? That is, the reason we need 2.27 per prof is because we’re paying for sessionals with that? So doesn’t that mean a changes if you move the cost of sessionals into Y?
One could define it that way, yes. I’ve chosen not to because it’s slightly easier to see the substitution effect. And yes, you;re right there is a bit of the 2.27 which goes to pay sessionals, but as you’ll see tomorrow it;s pretty small. I;ll make that clearer tomorrow.
Alex, I hope you will have time for a blog post exploring the shift from class time spent on content presentation toward class time focused on smaller groups working on integrating and applying knowledge. That can change the formula for the student experience of “class size”: if the instructor load is 45 students but the students meet in groups of 15 for classes, there is potential to improve the productivity of class time and the faculty effort it entails.
I am thinking of the research on blended learning classes at the University of Central Florida and the ITHAKA research study at the University of Maryland last year. The latter concluded that “in hybrid formats, faculty were able to achieve outcomes comparable to traditionally taught sections with, on average, considerably reduced class time…Students in these hybrid sections fared as well or…slightly better than students in traditional sections” and “these findings held true for academically at risk students as well”. http://sr.ithaka.org/research-publications/interactive-online-learning-on-campus
There are also other efforts to address the iron triangle in innovative ways, e.g., to invest more time early in our programs to develop student self-efficacy and self-reliance as learners. That can also provide the capability for students to thrive in some of the hybrid environments mentioned above (the original ITHAKA pilot study in Spring 2013 within the University System of Maryland illustrated how this might pay off).