| BGSU protesters march |
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| Written by JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN Sentinel County Editor | ||||
| Thursday, 07 February 2013 12:25 | ||||
A few then hand-delivered a petition bearing more than 5,100 signatures to BGSU President Dr. Mary Ellen Mazey, asking that the university halt its plans to cut 100 faculty members by this fall. Joining the march were faculty members afraid their departments would be crippled by the cuts, and students worried their education would be devalued. "She's intending on firing 100 teachers," Ian Gaul, a junior psychology major, said of Mazey. "The reason I came to BG was the quality of education." And that will undoubtedly suffer if the cuts are made, he said. "I fear I'm going to lose the intimacy with my teachers," if class sizes become larger. Danielle Oetjen, also a junior psychology major, agreed. "That's just unacceptable. The class sizes are large enough." The administration has said the faculty cuts are necessary to keep BGSU affordable for students. They have also stated that faculty-student ratios will still be lower than comparable Ohio universities. BGSU officials anticipate the majority of the faculty reductions will come from retirements and other voluntary departures. According to a statement released by the administration Wednesday afternoon, the remaining reductions will be determined after the university negotiates the effects of this reduction with the Faculty Association. But the protesters said the faculty reductions would only hurt BGSU. "We want to convince the administration they are making a mistake," said Dr. David Jackson, head of the BGSU Faculty Association that organized the march. The cuts will result in larger classes and fewer options for students, Jackson said. The signs carried by protesters expressed their anger. They read, "Save the BGSU 100," "Slashing Faculty Hurts BG," and "Faculty Care About Students, Why Don't You?" (A video of the march can be seen at sent-trib.com). The chants conveyed the same messages, some pointing blame such as, "All the fat is in the head, cut the 'admin' pay instead."
The quality cannot withstand the cuts, said Dr. Becky Mancuso, of the history department, which is already short-staffed due to positions not being filled as faculty have retired or left for other jobs. "We have enormous holes in our curriculum we can't fill," Mancuso said. "We can't weather any more losses." Dr. Clayton Rosati, of the media and communications department, said his job is not at risk, "but I'm outraged. We'll all be affected." "When other areas of the country are investing in education, we seem to be divesting," he said. Rosati had hopes the march on McFall might convince administration to reconsider the cuts. "I hope we show the university has a great deal of opposition," he said. "The campus won't stand for cutting faculty and increasing class sizes." The faculty was joined by many students showing support. "I'm here to defend the 100 faculty members who are losing their jobs," said Kerbie Minor, a senior theater major. "As a theater major, I know the benefit of small classes." On their way to McFall, the marchers weaved their way through the BGSU student union. Harley Rohrbacher, a criminal justice major, was working at a table for the UAO in the union, but said she supported the protesters. "They are talking about increasing the number of students" by enrolling more at the university while cutting faculty. "I don't think it's fair to them," Rohrbacher said. The statement released by the administration Wednesday afternoon said officials will continue to "negotiate in good faith with the BGSU Faculty Association for our first collective bargaining agreement with the goal of reaching a mutually beneficial contract. Negotiations have now moved to fact-finding. In keeping with our commitment to the Faculty Association to negotiate at the bargaining table, and not in the media, BGSU will not be commenting further on either the faculty reductions or contract negotiations." |
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| Last Updated on Thursday, 07 February 2013 12:27 |
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Comments
If they truly cared about the 100, they would be willing to give up a bit of their pay or benefits, but not one faculty member is offering that as an option. Let's be honest, dropping from a $200,000 salary to $195,000 salary would be devastating. If I were part of the 100, I would have one question for my fellow faculty members: WTF I thought we were in this together?!?!
http://www.bgsu.edu/downloads/finance/file97520.pdf
See the link @ http://toledobladedata.com/caspio/
Another factor that may be misleading is comparing base salary with actual year end salaries, as a large number of the faculty teach summer session at a REALLY INFLATED Salary, due to the way the University calculates summer session salaries.
Faculty members who have served as Dept Chair and/or other similar positions never loose that salary step when they return to the regular faculty?
The "BIG" Difference is that K-12 Teachers Teach a "FULL DAY/EVERY DAY" and most College "Profs" Teach up to 3 Classes a SEMESTER. Little Comparison whether it be the number of preps, student grading work and/or time in class with students etc.
And Yes, Faculty members who have served as Dept Chair and/or other similar positions DON'T loose that salary step when they step down as Dept Chair etc. That is based on first hand knowledge of BGSU Contracts.
280+ Staff Members @ BGSU made over $90,000 & 197 made over $100,000 in 2010. With the proposed cuts and factoring in the current 2013 salaries, nearly 1/2 of the Staff will be making over $100,000. 350+ of 700 staff after cuts.
Still NO Comparison!
The WORK LOAD for a K-12 Teacher is FAR GREATER than that of a "Prof"
You may be the exception to "office hours" and may have students come see you BUT most "Profs" I know don't keep that many hours and not many students use office hrs other than to turn in work etc.
PS: MOST K-12 Teachers are in their class before and after school to assist students! Easily a 8-10 Hr day every day!
Sorry, but teaching 3 courses (9-12 Hrs in classroom per week) does NOT compare to 6-7 Hrs per day/5 days per week!
With "Blackboard" and today's technology, teaching College is NOT what is used to be. Very few "Profs" alter their Syllabus from semester to semester and MANY have the same 3 Preps during a semester. If you do, then you are the "EXCEPTION"!
When you bring up Blackboard and how little profs might alter their syllabi, that also pains me. For one thing, Blackboard helps with distributing material and making it accessible,but when it is used as a crutch to avoid engagement with students--and it's losing that engagement that worries me--then it is a shirking of duty. And, sadly, there are lots of professors who go on autopilot, such mediocrity should not be the standard and I submit that the ones students find most effective do not do that.
BGSU's benefits are in keeping with peer institutions--other colleges in Ohio and elsewhere, public and private, and even on the low side. They should NOT be compared with your job or other businesses in Wood County. You are falling into a trap, Peggy, of people (including some in the BGSU administration) trying to politicize the faculty crisis at BG from the outside, preying on resentments and antagonisms felt by conservatives in NW Ohio againt higher education in general. The crisis at BGSU is not as much about salary and benefits as it is about quality of a BGSU degree.
I think there is something very weird, creepy, and bullying about hiding behind your fake name while attacking so viciously two very honest people who are brave enough to use their own. Who is your audience? People who know even less about what really goes on in a university than you do? People who want to see BGSU and UT wiped off the face of Ohio because of all the liberals? I just don't get it. What does any of this have to do with an honest discussion of what is going on between the administration and the faculty, and the quality of education at BGSU?
BG has a ridiculous low cost of living compared to most of the state.
But, wait, aren't you arguing that the BG professors are overpaid and that these cuts don't go far enough, especially by not cutting the programs you dislike?
BGSU's administration had a problem with faculty pay and working conditions. It compounded those problems by firing about one-fourth of its core--the lowest-paid faculty who teach the most undergraduates. That decision will have ripple effects for students--bigger sections, less choice, reduced availability of faculty to help and advise, and longer time to degree. If you are a concerned alumnus, that's something you should care about. Faculty want to preserve opportunities for students and to continue a tradition of excellence in teaching and research. Alumni and alumnae should be concerned about what the administration is doing to the value of the degree.
And "money trees"? Is that where we get all the cash to pay obscene salaries and benefits to the college president? And endless money-is-no-problem techno contracts that turn our tax dollars into private profits instead of student resources?
Firing faculty is not about lack of money; it is an ugly power grab and a reallocation of resources from the many to the few.
http://www.toledobladedata.com/caspio/2010BGSU.asp
The cuts are NOT going into salary increases, not by any measurable amount.
As so many people have attested, BGSU has a lower pay scale than any of its peer institutions. It is improper to compare professor pay with the Wood County average or mean, but with professors at UT, Kent, OU, Miami, etc... Pat Huron's comment is spot-on.
You anti-education trolls just have so much riding on your outsized exaggerations of what you think professors make that you can't handle the facts.
http://www.sent-trib.com/front-page/faculty-cuts-debated
Attacks against faculty sound like part of the anti-intellectualism narrative that has created a nation that thrives on sports and frivolous distraction while the world passes it by.
http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/higher-ed
As has been stated repeatedly, the Mazey Administration is targeting Non-Tenure-Track faculty. On average, they make around $40K. Most teach 4 courses a semester. If you terminate 9 of them, it still doesn't match Mazey's salary or the football coach's salary. And those 9 faculty teach 72 courses each year. These cuts will hurt the quality of education at BGSU.
I searched the site leaving the name and department fields blank. I entered a salary range of 100,000 to 100,000+ and the year 2010.
198 results were returned.
In the first 10, only one was an administrator. There were 7 professors and 1 associate professor and 1 assistant professor.
The highest paid person in the first 10 was a professor from the finance dept who made 175,276.00.
The only administrator in the first 10 made 135,487.00.
The professors in the first 10 listed were from the math, psychology, and various business departments.
A quick scan of all the others and it clearly showed that the professors/assoc. professors and assist. professors out numbered the administrators.
Also most of professors were not from the business department either.
Also, keep in mind that not a single Professor/Associate Professor/Assistant Professor is in the group Mazey is targeting. I did not look through the whole list, but I am pretty sure that there are no Instructors at BGSU who make $100K or more.
Three things about Buckeye:
1. the site is at least 2 years out of date
2. if you do a search on any specific people to any statistically meaningful extent, and if you do a search on any of the people targeted for downsizing, you will find that I am not lying. At. All.
3. In their supporting documentation, Buckeye identifies itself as a conservative watchdog of public education costs. It does not contain any information about private institutions. But teachers at public universities are recruited from the same pool as those at private ones.
Lastly, there is a CW who works at Kent State who makes a lot. I am not he, and if you are counting lifetime pension you are dishonest.
Concerned, your tendency toward personal attack is vile and off-base. Both Karin and I were not "shown the door" but were hired elsewhere.
Are you trying to unmask some liberal conspiracy in order to discredit BGSU professors in general? Do you care at all about the quality of education at BGSU? Do you have any background relating to college at all, or are you just taking ludicrous pot shots like Caron likes to do?
So we agree. Reliable site. Many faculty, paid extremely well. Many more paid much less.
If I was on a one-year contract, I'd be pissed at the tenured faculty too. Their actions appear to have cost 100 of the hired help their jobs.
But I'm not going to plead with anyone to get less of the CW comments. (They are hardly of any educational value.)
But I will point out that sometimes people feed the trolls, and Christopher, it would seem that every day to you is Thanksgiving
When the esteemed Dr. Williams resorts to taunting, such as when he wrote below, "Is little baby tuckums all upset that I insulted his heroes?" then yes, his behavior is, at best, troll-like.
The bottom line is, it's time to dump the dead weight and reform.
What I do think is that the march for the "BGSU 100" was some mashup of a paycheck pity party, or a lot of sputtering over having to teach larger course sections.
I don't think anyone who is eliminated is "dead weight." But I do realize that we live in a do-more-with-less time. The BGSU-FA picked a tough time to bargain. And they appear to not be handling that reality very well.
Then lets see how many students want to march!!
As I was corrected a couple weeks ago: the BGSU population is now around 17,000.
Did you see the giddy throngs of students marching with the faculty on Wednesday? Why, there must have been what? 45? 50 students, perhaps, at that march?
BGSU-FA, if that's your turnout, after many of you made your feelings about contract negotiations a class discussion topic, well, better think what your next move is going to be. (Another internet petition, maybe?)
Face it, getting grad students to show up to march doesn't mean squat because most grad students pay little or nothing for tuition.
If you can't convince the 18-22y.o's, how do you hope to sway the Trustees or McFall administrators?
Certainly, there had to be quality teaching AND course availability AND a host of support and ancillary services in place. It all contributes to student success.
About quality teaching: it's a buyer's market. You get quality teaching on campuses across the Midwest. Students choose colleges based on a host of things, but NOT whether faculty are well paid. Nobody has ever asked "So are the staff happy?" on a tour.
In the 101 years of BGSU some staff left for greener pastures & some unsatisfied staff that stayed. In the grand scheme of it all, none of that mattered in a measurable way. BGSU will soldier on, despite individual attitude issues.
The faculty aren't asking for more pay in return for more work.
They want no change in workload in return for more pay.
And in light of the fact that the Kasich budget appears to CUT funding for BGSU while increasing it at most of our in-state peer institutions, clearly something is going to have to give.
And yes, a whole lot of this is about attitude. We all need to be grown-up enough to realize that we choose our own morale. Nobody else chose our attitude for us, nor do we work under a system of indentured servitude. If it was easy, or pleasant all the time, they wouldn't call it work.
BINGO!!
Times have completely changed, and faculty who truly see themselves as the sun around which students orbit are fooling themselves. You're important cogs in the machine, but cogs nonetheless.
John has it nailed tho. Christopher and others can fuss about it, but he's right. Go ahead. Hate the game, don't hate the player.
a) punish the faculty for unionizing;
b) "divide and conquer" by pitting the vulnerable faculty who will suffer against the remaining, supposedly privileged, faculty in order to undermine the union (aka union-busting);
c) scare the s@#t out of the remaining faculty so that they/we will cave at the negotiating table.
Many of us WOULD be willing to forgo raises, even take pay cuts, to preserve our colleagues' jobs--but that would be an easier case to make if a)we had HAD any raises in recent history; b) admin and other areas agreed to share the pain; and c) if faculty had ANY input into this decision in the first place!
b) see above
c) by all means, take that idea to your BGSU-FA leaders
c)b) You clearly have no idea how much the administrative and classified ranks have taken it on the chin already.
c)c) At this stage, you're still entitled to your own opinions. But the only way you'll get actual INPUT is if you BARGAIN for it. Better hope the BGSU-FA can bring that about.
A higher education comes from understanding facts and being engaged in critical thinking. None of your heroes comes close.
Let me pose this question to you: do you think Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh are more honorable and trustworthy than the college professors who work at BGSU?
Since you asked, I'd say FOX News, Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, O'Reilly and their ilk are far less honorable and trustworthy than faculty anywhere. I'd also say BGSU faculty are, individually, extremely astute when it comes to their field of study and many of them are also talented teachers.
However, I'd say that they also appear to collectively be in denial as to how Higher Education runs in the present. It's as if they cling to some idea of the academy that passed before they were born. This "Pay-US-more-and-BGSU-will- thrive!" stance is absurd.
And faculty refusal to ADAPT to today's do-more-with-less climate makes them seem more conservative than progressive.
My politically pointed comment was directly addressed to "Concerned" and to "John." Thanks for differentiating yourself.
These rants from the uneducated who know NOTHING about education are terrible to read. The BG community should be ashamed!
CW, where?? Where do you mean to say they are?
Certainly they aren't in your GSW course...
Note that I didn't bring up the president at all. YOU did.
Is little baby tuckums all upset that I insulted his heroes?
Probably not.
But I think most readers are wondering why you've stooped to name-calling?
Ignoring someone is a far shot from treating them with respect.
Responding to troll-bait only makes one seem, well, trollish.
How do you have so much insider knowledge about BGSU that you know Karin Barbee and Christopher Williams are "lying" about education? What lies are they telling? Based on what I know, they are absolutely telling the truth.
If you feel the BG community should feel shame for not supporting BGSU-FA, remember that it was the faculty that walled themselves off from the rest of the campus community. Faculty COULD have chosen to include their department admin assistants, the academic advisors, library staff, admissions recruiters, Learning Commons staff, and others on campus when they unionized.
But instead, they chose going it alone, shouting out "Until WE Win!"
So remind me, who declared what war?
Yes, you've lost the sympathy of much of the town, to say nothing of the campus community.
Good luck to you all.
I voted to cut American Culture Studies. I was going to vote for Communications, but then I changed my mind at the last minute. After all, we need Communications as a major if we're going to continue to have athletic scholarships. And as for ACS, seriously, how many more studies of zombie films do we really need?
You obviously have a political axe to grind.
Can't handle that free and critical thought, can you?
But at a certain point I think it is fair to ask how many studies of L/B/G/T Iconography in Zombie Films the world really needs? And also, whether it can't safely be left to UC-Davis to subsidize it through their GA stipends, not BGSU's?
Thanks for proving me right about you.
You're welcome.
OK!
Sound familiar?
I also won't defend BGSU upper admin with our rookie President, rookie Provost, dysfunctional cabinet, a couple of VPs that are out of ideas & a BOT that should demand answers not be washed & rinsed through the McFall spin cycle.
It's a bit of a cluster-muck right now.
Roll Along!
Well, that's a creative spin on it. But whatever you want (hope?) to call it, believe me, it's going to cost students a pretty penny when they open their Fall tuition bills.
The only thing inspiring about that is the thought of someday finishing the thesis and trying to land a faculty job somewhere so that some GA can do MY photocopying for a change.
It is not necessary to have a degree in order to have valid points, but it is necessary to have done the basic research on any given topic, including familiarity with peer-reviewed academic work that may support or, crucially, poke holes in one's assumptions.
Obviously.
Minimum-wage-paying factory owners and fast-food managers?
Please, Glenn Beck? Seriously. You are a quack. "clearthinker' is obviously a misnomer for you.
Assuming that the only valid perspective is that of a "job creator" is just wrong. First, it merely repeats Beck's slavish adoration of rich people as job creators, when it has been proven that just shoveling money at rich people does not, in fact, create jobs. However, spare me the "pity." The value of an educator lies in their knowledge, the ability to impart it, and the ability of their students to parlay that into being highly desirable on the job market.
Teaching isn't work? Research isn't work? Earning a PhD isn't work?
Where is the "bitter"? And what makes it "liberal"? Clueless!
Reasoning skills are nothing without the ability to distinguish fact from fiction, which neither you, "clearthinker," nor "concerned" seems to have.
This is the sort of thing that makes the American right wing the laughing stock of the world.
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