supply, demand, and Slavic studies

[Charlotte Wallace]

Thank you for your comments. I have the highest respect for Vartan
Gregorian and especially appreciate what he had to say about tenure.


Charlotte Wallace
Slavic Department, DP-32
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
206-543-6848

On Mon, 10 Apr 1995, Robert Mathiesen wrote:

> I am more pessimistic than either David or Ernest, but with a difference:
> the fate of Slavic linguistics as an academic profession seems to me to
> be tied up with the fate of small-sized academic professions in general.
>
> If you look at the kinds of departments and programs that get cut, at one
> university or another, you will see several things in common.  First, they
> do not -- on the whole -- produce large numbers of wealthy alumni.  Second,
> they do not -- on the whole -- produce much revenue from grants and con-
> tracts.  Third, they do not -- on the whole -- form professional organiza-
> tions that have substantial political or economic "clout."
>
> From where I sit, most University high administrators seem to be primarily
> concerned these days with the solvency of their institutions, which they
> see as structurally damaged.  They do not see any good way to contain the
> sharply escalating cost of running a University: salaries, benefits, lia-
> bility, health insurance, hard-ware, soft-ware, books and especially jour-
> nals, etc.  To put *one* full professor in the classroom for one year at a
> gross salary of $50,000, they have to buy benefits at a cost of another
> $50,000, more or less.  To generate that revenue from endowment, year after
> year, at 5%, you need $2,000,000 in your endowment.  That's $2,000,000 per
> professor.  Now multiply by the size of your faculty...
>
> That assumes that the University pays for itself.  Of course, most don't.
> Tuition can only be increased so far before it stops coming in, even if
> there are no other cheaper providers of the same goods and services.
>
> In the past, of course, higher education was often subsidized by state
> or federal government, directly or indirectly.  The political will to
> continue doing this, at least to any great extent, seems no longer to be
> there, and it is not clear that it will return within our lifetimes.
>
> Assume, for the moment, that you too are a university high administrator,
> and you regard all of the above observations as true.  What way out do you
> have?  The only easy way out is to greatly increase the number of students
> taught by each faculty member each semester.  This you can do in part by
> new technology which multiplies each professor's contact with students at
> the cost of personal interaction.  In part you can do it by increasing
> each professor's work load, but this only goes so far.  (Each of these will
> diminish the quality of instruction, of course, but if it is diminished
> at all universities more or less equally, one's own university remains
> economically viable.)  But most of all what you do is put most of your
> faculty salaries and benefits in to those fields which either have the
> largest classes, or which bring in the most revenue from sources other
> than tuition.  Of course, too, you have to worry about not offending any
> professional body that had a great amount of clout with the sources of
> funds on which you depend.
>
> What this all may mean is that the kind of University we all know, where
> one can study a wide range of topics in relatively small classes, will be
> a thing of the past in another 30 years or so.
>
> Here are some telling quotations from the last annual report of our own
> University's president, Vartan Gregorian:
>
> "... it is reasonable to ask why the University should not continue along
> the roads it has recently taken, knowing that they have worked so well in
> the past.  The answer, very simply, is that conditions in the nation, but
> also in the world, have changed so substantially in the last decade that
> what seemed reasonable in 1969 is no longer adequate today.  To put the
> matter bluntly, while Brown, like a number of other American universities,
> is flourishing, the nation is not."
>
> "... the changes in the faculty will be no less great. .....  The teaching
> role, defined essentially as a classroom role, will be significantly added
> to.  It is not so much that so-called "teaching loads" of individual pro-
> fessors will be increased, though some may be, but the functions and re-
> sponsibilities defined as professorial will be reconceived.  It is very
> likely that the whole system of faculty tenure -- introduced early in
> the 20th century when free speech issues were of legitimate concern to
> professors ... -- will have to be reviewed in the light of much that has
> happened since.  Is it reasonable to assume that 21st-century universities,
> and not only Brown, will remain accepting of the idea that an individual
> appointed in his or her late 30's or early 40's should enjoy life tenure,
> defined literally as guaranteed ewmployment until the age when senility
> sets in?  May it not seem more just ... to guarantee something like five-
> or ten-year term appointments ...?"
>
> This from  a *very* intelligent man, who was NOT born to a life of power
> and privilege, but rose to his present position from the humblest of
> beginnings through his own education and merit in Iran, in Lebanon, and
> eventually in this country, should give every one of us occasion to
> think deeply and long about our unspoken professional assumptions and
> about the foundations on which we are building or have built our careers.
>
> The thoughts that they have led me to are absolutely chilling!
>
> (Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000 at BROWNVM.BITNET)
>