By From The Editors
Construction vehicles have become as frequent as the Blue Beetle on campus, one of the many signs of the University’s quest to boost its reputation and enrollment. However, the new buildings, programs, logos and equipment will be worthless, if the University loses site of what has carried the school this far – the faculty.
Most students are oblivious to the concerns of teachers outside of the classroom. While students scamper off to club meetings or back to their beds during Common Hour, the faculty members have been receiving an education of their own.
With their contracts expiring in August, they are soaking in as much information as they can about the financial state of the University in case the upcoming negotiations escalate into a battle to preserve their health benefits.
At this time, the administration has not indicated plans to cut the health benefits of the faculty, however, the professors are learning from the secretaries at the University.
This summer, the secretarial staff was on the verge of protesting, but instead settled on a contract that forced them to pay premiums of their health benefits and family health benefits. The decision outraged many employees, some of who have worked more than 20 years here despite being among the lowest paid workers at the University.
The plight of secretaries raised red flags among the faculty. The American Association of University Professors responded by hiring an accountant to investigate whether the University is in a financial crisis.
What the accountant discovered is that the University is booming. The money is there, however, it is being allocated to “other academic” needs, while the amount spent on faculty has declined.
According to the Five Year Plan to reshape the University released November 2004, “At Hofstra University, excellence in teaching has been, is, and will continue to be our highest priority.”
At the crux of the plan are goals to “increase the number of full-time faculty” and “support excellence in teaching and scholarship by attracting and retaining the best possible faculty.”
To achieve these goals, the administration’s strategy for attracting and securing quality professors is to create endowed research funds and awards and to acquire new equipment. However, while faculty relish new research opportunities, they need health care. The plan fails to address how the University will guarantee these benefits over the next five years, the length of the teachers’ contracts.
The Chronicle respects the University’s efforts to offer new and exciting programs and high-tech equipment to the student body, however, the faculty defines the experiences and the education students receive.
The entire nation is experiencing the blow of rising health care costs, and like many businesses, the University is trying to cope by asking its employees to share a portion of the burden. However, the University should not be compared to commercial businesses. Its success can not be measured in revenue, review boards or production, but in the attitudes and relationships of students and faculty.
If faculty members are forced to step up and pay more for health care, they may need to work extra jobs to compensate for the costs, limiting their availability to students, or they may chose to leave the school completely. Either situation would hurt students’ abilities to learn from and network with seasoned, qualified professors and hinder the administration’s plan to improve the University’s academic reputation. (The overall goal is for the University to ascend from Tier 3 to “the Top 125” ranked National Universities in the U.S. News rankings.)
Obviously, the administration is not rolling in piles of money. While the faculty stress over high health care bills, however, the money that is available should be used to secure faculty health benefits before it is allocated to other projects. There is nothing more important than the faculty. They are the direct link to students and the essence of the University.
This week more than 100 professors attended the full-faculty meeting, all wearing red shirts displaying “Hofstra Works Because We Do.” The demonstration was not an attempt to protest or undermine the University, but to show that they will stay united throughout the negotiations. The Chronicle supports the teachers in their endeavor to maintain the quality of life they have endured for the past five years. They deserve the benefits, and student can benefit from having happy and healthy professors. As the administration enters into contract negotiations, hopefully they will remember the faculty remains the brains and the backbone of the University.