| BGSU faculty group blasts Mazey for planned cuts |
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| Written by HAROLD BROWN Sentinel City Editor | ||
| Tuesday, 22 January 2013 11:55 | ||
BGSU-FA was responding to a late Friday afternoon confirmation by Mazey of plans to reduce faculty employment by 100 by the start of fall semester in August. Rogers apparently talked about the issue earlier last week during a meeting of the BGSU Faculty Senate. The university and BGSU-FA are in their second year of negotiations for a first contract for faculty. The statement says Mazey “offered the disingenuous claim that these positions will come from attrition, retirements and the expiration of some one-year teaching contracts.” BGSU-FA claims that chairs and directors were given a list of non-tenure track faculty whose contracts end this academic year and told to identify faculty to cut. “This mass termination is indicative of the Mazey administration’s lack of long-term vision and its continuously subpar top-down management.” The union says the result will increase the student-to-faculty ratio, class sizes will increase and the variety of classes decline. “Despite Mazey’s marketing team’s spin to the contrary, students’ educational experience at BGSU will be diminished greatly,” the statement claims. The university said Friday the move would save $5.2 million that can be directed to other priorities, including competitive salaries for faculty and staff. BGSU-FA claims the latest administration salary and benefits proposals, when added up, do not cost BGSU any more than it pays out now to faculty and that BGSU faculty compensation will remain second to the bottom as compared to other public Ohio institutions. “But the $5.2-million savings is suspiciously close to the $5 million number that BGSU officials have floated as the loss from state share of instruction under Ohio’s new funding plan,” the statement indicates. “In other words, Mazey may have decided that faculty alone should absorb any budgetary challenges. It’s certainly easier than cutting six-figure administrators, in-the-red athletics, expensive residence halls, luxurious renovations to the rec center, high-priced outside consultants, failed football bowl games, or Mazey’s team of spin doctors which, as Mazey administration spending indicates, are her true priorities.” The statement alleges the administration has “no intelligent strategy for handling the new state funding model or for recruiting students” and has made no efforts to address faculty pay or cost-of-living adjustments. |
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Comments
The "money" pie is only so large my friend". In order to dish out larger slices, some will be denied.
Adjunct professors were already limited to the calculated equivalent of less than 30 hours per week.
Nice try throwing something political at this in hoping it would stick.
Since that is the bill of fare now, so be it. The Union is run by a bunch of flaming idiots that are so bent out of shape over money and delusions of entitlement they can't see straight. They would have every building or function at BGSU rot if it means a .001% boost in pay. Their leadership will destroy BGSU before they compromise. They will redirect away from the bottom line just as much as they accuse the administration of doing. They will attack anything and hurt those things at any cost if it serves their goals.
This is actually not a partisan political matter, nice try to make it one. Unless you basically hate college professors because they tend to be more liberal than you want them to be.
You are really pulling your information about the BGSU-FA out of fantasy land.
The issues between the faculty and administration strongly pre-date and thus have little of substance to do with the unions.
Amanda....the "employees" are NOT needed!
Your moniker suggests you have so much contempt for college professors that you really don't have anything serious to contribute to the discussion.
I didn't major in either of those at BGSU, but I took classes in both and still learn from the material to this very day....and I'm a white male!
Note also: the president's plan does not include targeting these majors. That's just your agenda.
Or do you feel that there are not enough heads rolling?
Graduates with interdisciplina ry humanities majors have a lot of options on graduating: law, international non-profits, foreign service, even med if they have a strong science minor. Only a very few go on to graduate study in their named fields, and those who are able to obtain funding to do so at prestigious universities around the country benefit BGSU's or UT's reputation. Students can document their ability to analyze and write about complex material and to think laterally--skills that are too rare among graduates who cleve to John's "just the facts, ma'am" approach.
What do YOU do for a living that you don't need these things?
The good news is CW and Brian are just the type of faculty who will be slashed by these two glorious institutions as they move forward on reform and cut the entitle minded dead weight.
The entitlement is entirely a parcel of the off-campus anti-education crowd of elitists who assume they have any idea on what value a university education actually carries. "Concerned" demonstrates this point by showing the cards in his hand indicating a lack of insight into education whatsoever. A sign of total ignorance and a total disconnect from learning or the learning process.
Since you didn't answer my question or contradict Brian, is it then true that you never graduated from college?
Not getting a degree is not a sign that one is stupid. Lincoln never went, but he was one of our most learned presidents. But mocking college after you failed at it IS stupid.
Steve Jobs never graduated from Stanford, but expressed his appreciation for the courses in the humanities he audited AFTER DROPPING OUT--but I suppose Steve Jobs was just in lala land, and knows much less about these things than Hannity, or Limbaugh, or Concerned.
A basic critical issue--and it is an issue with the UT situation as well, which is in some respects far worse--is writing. We hear from employers that they are disappointed in the quality of student writing and in their inability to "think laterally." Class size directly impacts the ability to teach writing, and to assign it. Smaller classes are the first casualty in these actions. Also casualties are the specialty classes that serve the best students. Outside institutions often measure the value of a college on the basis of its most impressive students. When BGSU can no longer serve them, it can no longer offer the value that is its best potential.
Why is "critical thinking" bad?
It is entirely INappropriate to use the word "entitlement" to describe this situation. You are trying to shoe-horn the university to fit your tiny little petty conception of the political world, and I am sorry, but it just won't work.
RIGHT ON TARGET my friend!
And what the heck is wrong with "critical thinking?"
Isn't that what university educations are about?
We see the cries of your dying anti-education ideology.
What is your definition of "critical thinking," really, that you find it such a bad thing?
From experience, it is far easier to come away from a smaller class with more knowledge than it is coming from a larger class. Teacher-student relationships are incredibly important, and are hard won when the teacher has to consider 300 other students. And it's so disappointing when a class you want to take (or need to!) is cancelled just because the enrollment is too small.
There's these things called 'ear-marks' that get me all worked up. I don't understand WHY money is ear-marked for one thing, and must be used by such-and-such a date. Before firing anyone, can't we find a way to consider the people that give the University money to remove the restrictions on it's use? There are so many other places it can be used!
The faculty are going to be teaching 3-3 or...wait for it...a 4-4 load. So that means that fewer adjuncts and one-year contracts will be required.
While the majority of the 100+ positions will not be filled, some will and they will be allocated to the departments that need additional faculty. So if the Popular Culture department is losing three faculty due to retirements, one of those positions could be moved over to the Math department. This new Math prof will teach 4 fall and 4 spring courses while his counterpart might have taught 1 fall/2 spring.
President Mazey makes nearly as much as the president of the United States and lives rent free in a mansion. It is a disgrace that she and her minions are forcing others to suffer and undermining the quality of education at BGSU.
BTW, John, Women's Studies is not being targeted by the administration, so take your reactionary axe-to-grind elsewhere.
These isolated and scared anti-education people are an extreme minority in our community, and are overrepresented on this website. Apparently they only want the 1st Amendment and sent-trib access to apply to them and their backward ideas alone.
Sad.
What on earth is "entitlement-minded" about anything I have said?
Aren't you just trying to import partisan talking points into something that doesn't have anything to do with them?
Is "critical thinking" code for something else in your mind? You think critical thinking--which is the very definition of what a college education is about--is a bad thing?
I'm not in the union, I am not talking about the union, therefore how could I have been responsible for hurting its reputation? Maybe, "Proud," the union has a "reputation" in your own mind that has more to do with the notion of unions in general than anything specific in the BGSU-FA.
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