I’ve been thinking about the upcoming academic year and how the realities of the state economy are going to impact the campus.
Isn’t it a sad state of affairs – prices of many have gone up, economy is down, and our employer is paying us less by sending us home 6-8 days for the next two years. I really feel for the faculty and staff in the UW System. Yesterday I sat next to the spouse of a UW Oshkosh faculty member at Rotary. He said she was out of sorts about the furloughs, that she had taught summer school because some of her junior colleagues at UWO had wished to do other work over the summer, and then she got caught in the summer furlough bind. And that they are not getting much empathy from people there who are in positions like mine. We talked for a while about it and I pointed out that while UWO faculty feel they are underpaid in the first place, he could just imagine how UW Colleges faculty, who are paid even less than UWO faculty, must feel.
I am sure our System folks were well meaning when they made the decisions they did about how the furloughs were to be taken, but I don’t know that they really truly understood the need to talk with faculty more directly. Perhaps they relied on people like me to communicate for them and maybe I have not been as effective as I should have been. Specifically, there is the need for faculty in particular to understand why faculty furloughs are to be taken during non-instructional times. Many faculty feel that those to whom they provide service, the students, should feel the impact of their furlough.
I believe UW Colleges Chancellor Wilson really tries his best to communicate with a geographically dispersed audience – 13 campus sites plus 72 county offices. He holds video town hall meetings, but relatively few show up for them. So I cannot fault him for lack of effort to communicate. I’ve always had the impression that our campus has really not paid much attention to the chancellor, no matter who was occupying that seat. Seems odd to me, but that’s the way it is.
Chancellor Wilson told me that UW System felt that the ire of the public would be enormous if they decided to increase tuition and then cut back on the number of instructional days. Of course it turn out that tuition was increased at all campuses except UW Fox and the rest of the UW Colleges.
We’re getting ready to start another year, and I recognize all to acutely that the feelings going into the year are less positive than normal. It’s too bad, but I feel rather powerless to influence anything that means much to people on the campus in this reagrd, especially when it comes to influencing at the bigger level of System.
President Reilly is our Fall Convocation speaker. I hope people will be civil to him, unlike the fiasco that is going on with health care reform. I don’t think he or anyone is making decisions with the idea of “Let’s stick it to the faculty and staff.” But a respectful question or two would not be out of place.
I’m willing to slug our way through this predicament together. It’s easier for me for a whole host of reasons (higher salary, no kids, relatively healthy dogs, etc.) , and I guess the best I can do is say to you all, and the public that might care to read this blog post, that I am trying to recognize that it can be enormously difficult for some – dare I say most -- of you, just as this is a difficult time for people in the private sector. I don’t think people in the private sector realize that after attaining the most highest and most prestigious degree the world’s universities have to offer we still start our faculty at less than $45,000 per year.
I wish I could make a difference, or make it different.