University Times

While the percentage of Pitt faculty with tenure has declined only slightly, the percentage in the pipeline for tenure is down substantially, a Faculty Assembly committee reports.

In 1974, 42 percent of full-time faculty here had tenure, compared with 40 percent in 1996.

But the percentage of full-time faculty in the tenure stream dropped from 35 percent to 12 percent during those years.

Faculty ineligible for tenure accounted for 48 percent of full-time faculty in 1996, up from 22 percent in 1974.

In its final report, released this month, the Faculty Assembly Committee on the Status of Faculty Appointments cited three major reasons for the shifts: * Tougher tenure requirements focusing on the number and quality of faculty publications, as well as research grants.

* Growth in non-tenure stream research positions.

* A growing number of physicians with non-tenure stream faculty appointments in the School of Medicine. Of 1,429 Pitt medical faculty members in 1996, 285 had tenure and only 143 were in the tenure stream.

Numbers of tenured and tenure-stream faculty varied considerably from school to school, the committee found.

"Given the importance of tenure for protecting academic freedom and for attracting and retaining talented and productive faculty," the report stated, "the fact that some units of the University have less than 25 percent of their faculty in tenured positions is a matter that warrants serious attention.

"At the same time, it is worth noting that in 1996 no major sub-unit of the University had more than 60 percent in tenured positions, indicating that the University should not be subject to criticisms of being too heavily tenured." The size of Pitt's faculty increased by one-third from 1980 to 1996 — from 2,892 to 3,851, the report noted.

"However, at the same time that the size of the faculty was growing, the profile of appointments was altered substantially, with those outside the tenure stream becoming a much larger proportion — approximately one-half — of the faculty." Comparing Pitt with all U.S. higher education institutions (including community colleges and less research-oriented universities), the committee found that Pitt has a much higher proportion of full-time appointments outside the tenure stream (48 percent vs. 27 percent).

Faculty Assembly and Senate Council this month endorsed the report's five recommendations. These include: calling on Pitt's administration, in consultation with faculty, to systematically collect and report data on faculty appointments; requiring departmental planning and budgeting committees to review their units' faculty appointments at least every three years to make sure appointments reflect faculty workloads and unit missions; and assigning a University Senate committee to investigate the role of non-tenure stream faculty and judge whether Pitt appropriately recognizes and compensates them for their work.

Pitt's Office of Institutional Research provided much of the data for the Faculty Assembly report. Education professor Mark Ginsburg chaired the 10-member committee.

— Bruce Steele