University Times

A School of Education faculty member said the declining proportion of tenured faculty at Pitt represented "a set of missed opportunities in the past year" to reverse a trend.

Mark Ginsburg, a member of the University Senate's tenure and academic freedom committee, reported on the latest faculty status statistics to Faculty Assembly Feb. 27.

Citing data compiled by Pitt's Office of Institutional Research, Ginsburg said, "Potentially more tenured and tenure-stream faculty could have been hired this year and were not, whether for good reasons or otherwise."

He said that while overall faculty size has increased, from 3,206 in 1999 to 3,353 in 2000, the greater proportion of that increase was of non-tenure-stream hires, continuing a trend, except at the regional campuses, of declining percentages of tenured and working-toward-tenure faculty in all categories. Tenure and tenure-stream faculty represent 44.8 percent of the total, down from 46.6 percent last year. Five years ago, the percentage was 51.5 percent.

The data he presented to Faculty Assembly included five categories of schools, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), the non-Health Sciences professional schools, the School of Medicine, other Health Sciences schools and the regionals.

Statistics covered 1974, 1980, 1985, 1990 and 1996-2000 inclusive, in four categories: percentage of full-time tenured and tenure-stream faculty, percentage of full-time and part-time tenure-stream faculty; percentage of part-time faculty, and number of tenured and tenure-stream faculty. (In Ginsburg's data, part-timers were factored in as 0.5 full-time equivalents. Data on part-time faculty include statistics beginning in 1980.) Ginsburg said the data suggested three main points: the continuing trend of decline of the percentage of full-time faculty who are tenured or tenure-stream (tenured/TS); a slight reversal of past years' declines in actual number of tenured/TS faculty in almost all units — but with a larger increase in non-tenure stream faculty hires; and the lost opportunity of hiring more tenured/TS faculty.

With the exception of the four regionals, which show a net percentage gain of 0.3 percent, all groupings showed a decline in the proportion of tenured/TS faculty.

Ginsburg said, "I see it as a somewhat hopeful sign that in some units the actual numbers of tenured and tenured-stream faculty went up," but the University continued to hire non-tenure stream and part-time faculty in greater proportions, he said. "If you look back a year ago, this [decline] was considered temporary according to the administration, because of the effects of the retirement incentive plan a couple years ago, but the evidence provides little support of that."

He added that the administration talked last year of "jumping up to 500 in FAS," which, statistics show, went from 460 to 462 tenured/TS faculty between 1999 and 2000.

Of the 3,353 full-time faculty University-wide, 1,151 are tenured; 350 are tenure-stream, and 1,852 are non-tenure-stream. There are 385 part-time faculty, only a handful of whom are tenured, such as tenured professors who go to part-time status prior to retiring.

Statistics show that in 1974 more than 90 percent of full-time faculty in FAS were in the tenure stream compared to 77 percent in 2000. The regional campuses' percentages declined similarly from 88 percent in 1974 to 64 percent in 2000. But the numbers show even bigger drop-offs in the medical school (68 percent to 26 percent) and the other health sciences schools (74 percent to 35 percent) over the same period. (Tenure rates in the non-Health Science professional schools have been the steadiest: 77 percent in 1974 and in 2000.) Ginsburg and other Faculty Assembly members agreed that the Health Sciences professional schools, especially medicine, had anomalies not reflected in the statistics, because of the increasing number of faculty who have clinical or supervisory roles. Also, there are increasing numbers of scientists whose contracts are paid with soft money and physicians who are employees of hospitals or physician practice plans who are given non-tenured academic appointments within the University.

Ginsburg said he hoped the data would be analyzed at the departmental level in an ongoing way. "What is the appropriate proportion of tenured faculty at the University? What is the optimum mix? Our committee (tenure and academic freedom) tried not to address that, except to say this belongs at the unit and department levels. That's where the discussion should be. The question to ask is when does the unit get uncomfortable at the level of non-tenure-stream faculty?"

He added that there are a number of factors contributing to fluctuating numbers within a discipline that would inhibit setting absolute percentage standards for tenure, including the amount of external funding; how a discipline is evolving, and the number of interdisciplinary programs.

Other Faculty Assembly members said that before sounding any alarms on the tenure issue, certain clarifications were desirable, such as the percentage of courses taught by tenured/TS faculty and part-time faculty; the percentage of students part-timers are teaching, and the proper percentage of full-time equivalency with which to represent part-timers in a statistical analysis.

University Senate President Nathan Hershey said he would put the issue on the agenda for the next Senate Council meeting, scheduled for March 12.

–Peter Hart