UW System schools may now need to document their instructors’ hours in the classroom after the Joint Finance Committee added the provision back into the 2017-’19 biennial budget Wednesday night.
The Board of Regents would be tasked with creating a policy on faculty and academic staff teaching workloads, including a public report on how many hours are spent teaching. Those who teach more “than the standard academic load” would be rewarded.
Gov. Scott Walker wrote the provision into his original funding proposal and has long claimed that it allows for transparency and makes UW System students a priority.
“They might be able to make savings just by asking faculty and staff to consider teaching one more class a semester,” Walker said in 2015. “Things like that could have a tremendous impact on making sure that we preserve an affordable education for all of our UW campuses, and at the same time we maintain a high-quality education.”
Walker’s provision has faced criticism from many in academia, however, including UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank.
“UW-Madison faculty provide service to Wisconsin in three critical areas—teaching, research, and outreach,” Blank said in a statement. “Each of these services is important so any method of tracking faculty workload should include all three areas, not merely time spent in the classroom.”
PROFS, a non-profit advocacy organization consisting of UW-Madison faculty and staff, also strongly opposed the teaching workload provision.
Jack O’Meara, a PROFS lobbyist, said the workload is already monitored closely and that the proposed tracking downgrades the importance of research at an institution whose reputation is built on it.
“We’re already slipping in the research ranking,” O’Meara said. “We’re no longer in the top five in the country and if what we’re telling faculty is, ‘Your only important job is to teach,’ then that’s going to hurt our research standing even more.”
