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May 16, 2007
Critique of Faculty Treatment Post-Katrina
New Orleans colleges, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, failed to follow their own procedures in their treatment of faculty members, which led to prolonged lapses in academic freedom protection, a new report by the American Association of University Professors finds.
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The eight-member “Special Committee on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans Universities” based its conclusions on interviews with faculty members, chief administrative officers and lawyers representing some of the institutions. The report focuses on Tulane University, Loyola University New Orleans, Southern University at New Orleans, and two campuses within the Louisiana State University system — the University of New Orleans and Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.
While noting that the storm caused widespread damage and forced colleges to make tough choices, the report says that disaster preparation at the five universities was “uneven.” That poor preparation is part of the reason why institutions found themselves needing to cut costs, which they did, in part, by terminating faculty members or placing them on unpaid leave, sometimes without due process, the report says.
“The largest problem common to just about all of these universities was a move by administrative authorities to abandon existing rules and regulations and to put in alternative measures in deciding how to proceed that moved away from checks and balances that had been in place,” said Jordan E. Kurland, principal staff officer with AAUP. “This happened at different degrees at different places and resulted in unnecessary decisions and dissatisfied faculty who felt they weren’t respected.”
The report says that while the committee heard reports of faculty members being singled out for adverse treatment on grounds unrelated to the hurricane, those charges could not be substantiated. But it adds that “given the manner in which these decisions were made — the malleability of standards, the absence of meaningful faculty involvement, the disregard for tenure, and, often, the inadequacy of review — it seems almost inevitable that such would be a common perception.”
Officials at the New Orleans institutions said they vehemently disagree with the report’s charges, particularly that the number of faculty terminations “exceeded the inescapable or minimal needs of the [institutions], sometimes substantially,” and that the “condition of academic freedom [at these institutions] remains alarmingly uncertain.”
“The LSU system continues to be astonished that the AAUP doesn’t understand the difference between planning for what can be considered a routine hurricane and for the most catastrophic hurricane in U.S. history,” said Charles Zewe, a spokesman for the LSU system.
Zewe said he sees the report more as a cautionary tale for colleges that are looking at how to prepare to a possible disaster. Emergency plans were “overwhelmed” by the scope of the disaster, which caused the system to keep an eye toward preservation, he said. “It’s regrettable that people’s jobs had to be sacrificed, but we felt then and feel now that it was necessary as a last resort measure. We ought to be applauded for preserving the vast majority of jobs.”
The report outlines, over dozens of pages, individual grievances against each of the five institutions. For instance, it criticizes the University of New Orleans for the manner in which it placed faculty on unpaid leave, and adds that “tenure is insecure and likely to remain so as long as the current Declaration of Financial Exigency with its procedures for releasing faculty remains in effect.”
Fredrick Barton, New Orleans’s provost, said the university’s exigency is up next month. The university decided that placing some faculty on leave and eventually terminating some contracts were necessary given the dire financial situation, which Barton said the report’s authors “fail to understand.” He said the university showed the AAUP committee documentation that while it expected nearly 15,000 students in fall 2006, only 11,700 enrolled. New Orleans had more than 17,250 students prior to Katrina.
Barton said no new faculty have been placed on unpaid leave since last summer. (Some of the previously terminated faculty have challenged the university’s decision to take action against them.)
“I don’t know at what point the AAUP will be willing to remove the statement that tenure is insecure here,” Barton said. “We don’t think so at all. Tenure remains highly important, but it can’t be the determining factor. What we’re saying is the survival of the institution required us to do this.”
The AAUP committee also came down on Loyola and Tulane, two of the wealthier institutions that sustained comparatively less hurricane damage. The report says Loyola showed a disregard for its policies by terminating the appointments of faculty on the stated grounds of program discontinuance. Kurland of the AAUP said he found particularly troubling the conduct of Loyola’s administration in “trying to fend off no confidence votes by the faculty” against the president and provost.
Both officials played a role in creating a controversial strategic plan that included the elimination or suspension of more than 20 academic programs and the dismissal of 17 tenured or tenure-track faculty members. A Loyola spokeswoman said the university isn’t commenting on the AAUP report until officials read the entire document. Last fall, the university reported that it had seen a 30 percent decrease in the size of the freshman class and that it had finished the fiscal year that ended in July with a $14 million budget shortfall.
The AAUP panel continued to criticize Tulane for the way it handled its academic reorganization and for its elimination of more than 200 faculty members on the grounds of exigency, making “no meaningful distinction between tenured and nontenured faculty members except in terms of notice and/or severance pay.” The report says that Tulane failed to provide “any but the most generic evidence [with] respect to the declared state of financial exigency,” which prevented faculty — tenured and untenured — from finding out details about their cases.
Kurland said that he has never been prepared to dispute Tulane’s financial exigency, but that area institutions with fewer financial resources have “moved out of that type of situation.” Tulane, like Loyola, declined to comment on details of the report. A statement from the university said that “after incurring massive losses as a result of Hurricane Katrina, the university is on a pathway to recovery. However, it is remarkable that, to this day, the AAUP fails to comprehend the magnitude of the devastation.”
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Comments
The Students Had To Go Somewhere
Maybe this is too simple, but did the students who failed to reenroll for the semester following simply drop off the face of the Earth? The drop in students claimed by New Orleans is around 33%. Did those students simply stop attending college? If not, where did they go? If a large majority of the missing students moved away to attend colleges elswhere, that means instructors would have been needed at the receiving schools. The instructors who lost jobs could (should?) have been given early opportunities to transfer (find new jobs) elswhere. Nothing was said about how much notice was given, so the ability of the instructors to transfer is unknown. Additonally, it is not mentioned whether the schools will be rehiring those with tenure or on tenure track as the student bodies of the different campuses begin to reach pre-Katrina levels. Most states I’m sure have protections to ensure thus. In addition, if the rules were so easily broken, the ACLU has grounds for a class action in favor of the profs. Even the State of Louisiana can be held accountable, if its laws (and possibly Federal ones) have been violated without the schools being penalized by the State.
Craig C, political pundit at http://blogresponder.blogspot.com, at 7:45 am EDT on May 16, 2007
As someone terminated in the wake of Katrina, let me say this. The administrators and deans, as well as others, at these schools treated the catastrophe as an opportunity to target their enemies for termination. In some cases, financially and academically successful programs were eliminated just in order to terminate the tenured faculty working in those programs. The response to Katrina by administrators and deans amounted to an orgy of corruption and nepotism. The elimination of these programs added to the problem of low enrollment, as students found they had to go elsewhere. At Loyola, votes of no confidence against the provost and president were totally ignored by them. They, and those at the other schools, will also ignore the AAUP report, of course. My only solace in being forced to walk the plank is that the ship was sinking.
Angelo, at 12:00 pm EDT on May 16, 2007
AAUP report on Katrina and Higher Education
I have recently retired after 46 years as a university professor, and I am a long time member of AAUP, currently serving as President of the AAUP Louisiana Conference.
There are clearly two paradigms of higher education competing. In the first, universities are, centrally, communities of scholars, learned and learning, in which the values of intellectual rigor and intellectual liberty are central. The second paradigm is an business/industrial model with a focus on productivity and costs as measured in readily quantified units….student credit hours, completion percentages, dollar costs. This second paradigm is most common in entrepreneurial for profit schools, but has been migrating more conventional, not for profit schools, especially state supported universities increasingly beset by fiscal pressures.
Trustees and administrators familiar with business models are drawn to the second paradigm and my observation is that it has become increasingly popular in our nation as a view of “big government” and taxes as “the problem” and free markets as the solution has taken hold.
The catastrophic impact of Katrina and Rita on the Gulf coast did not created but sharply accelerated a growing commitment to the business/industrial paradigm in our area. One manifestation of this acceleration is the substitution of the “force majeure” concept, familiar in business law, but unknown in academy for well established financial exigency procedures in our universities. Faculty furloughs and terminations with little or no due process and radical program revision with little or no faculty input were justified on the basis of “force majeure.”
Such actions, justified as a response to a crisis, should be understood as a radical departure from the community of scholars paradigm which, in my view, has been central to the excellence of the American system of higher education. It is a radical departure because it replaces the notion of university governance in which faculty play a meaningful role with a business/industrial notion of top down management. It is a radical departure because it is the community of scholars paradigm to which academic freedom and tenure are crucial.
To my mind, what is at stake is not academic freedom and tenure, per se, but a concept of higher education and, in the end, the excellence of our university system.
Alvin Burstein
Alvin Burstein, at 12:30 pm EDT on May 16, 2007
Actually, there is a third paradigm, which is predominant: The university as political indoctrination center where students are trained in exactly what to think about any given social problem.
JBM, at 8:00 pm EDT on May 16, 2007
Academic Circuit City Circus
I was one of the full-time, UNO faculty members cut in the Katrina exigency. However, I was rehired a couple of months after termination on an adjunct basis to teach the same class load for a fraction of my meager full-time pay, without any restoration of my health benefits. It reminds me of the staff cutback plan at Circuit City.
From my perspective, the Katrina cutbacks were part of a larger movement in academia to follow the corporate model of drastically cutting back on labor costs in the short-run, without regard for the possible long-term effects on quality. This situation can happen to anyone in academics. Just take a look at the Spellings report, which encouraged colleges to cut costs by moving more positions to part-time.
The administrators at Katrina-affected institutions do a great job of poor-mouthing in order to gain public acceptance of these cutbacks. Tulane seldom mentions that they had service-interruption insurance which covered many of the losses mentioned.
No one ever mentions that UNO faculty delivered an enhanced slate of online courses during the Fall of 2005 to serve the students and to provide a stream of income to keep the university viable. UNO had the opportunity to expand its revenues through these efforts, but failed to maintain the momentum. In spite of a financial shortfall, UNO was able to replace the voluntarily departed basketball program, which had enjoyed little support from students and the larger community before the storm.
I believe reasonable alternatives to the downsizing exigency plans could have been formulated if the creative talents of the faculty had been engaged rather than cast aside.
Downsized, at 8:00 pm EDT on May 16, 2007
Universities could have followed AAUP guidelines on exigency
The LSU System says that it “continues to be astonished” at criticism over its firing of faculty, and the Provost of the University of New Orleans (a campus of the LSU System) says that the AAUP “fails to understand” the need to fire faculty.
AAUP’s guidelines on financial exigency (http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/RIR.htm) have been around for decades, and have been endorsed by many universities throughout the country. The guidelines DO allow the firing of faculty (even tenured faculty) during exigency, contrary to what UNO’s Provost seems to imply. But the AAUP guidelines forbid both the firing of a faculty member on grounds of exigency while simultaneously hiring new faculty, and the firing of a tenured professor on grounds of exigency while retaining an untenured faculty member, except in extraordinary circumstances where a serious distortion of the academic program would result. The guidelines also declare (among other things) that a faculty member fired because of exigency shall not be replaced within a period of three years, unless he has been offered reinstatement and a reasonable time in which to accept or decline it.
Compliance with these rules would not have increased the universities’ costs. These rules are flexible enough for the LSU System and other universities to have been able to follow them, even in the aftermath of Katrina. Yet the financial exigency guidelines that various campuses in the LSU System issued after Katrina ignored or violated all of the above AAUP rules (see, for example, http://www.lsuhsc.edu/no/administration/BoardFindings.htm).
Until the LSU System endorses the AAUP guidelines on financial exigency, tenure will remain insecure throughout that system, despite what UNO’s Provost says.
Professor Charles Delzell
Louisiana State University and A&M College (in Baton Rouge)
Vice President of the LSU Chapter of the AAUP
Treasurer of the Louisiana Conference of the AAUP
Charles N. Delzell, Professor at Louisiana State University A&M College (in Baton Rouge), at 5:25 am EDT on May 17, 2007
I too wsa there for Katrina. I have since left for another position. And I too saw the numbers at my institution. I must confess to amusement at Prof. Burstein’s analysis. It does not take a great paradigm shift to “business” model to do the simple arithmetic here. If projected enrollments are not sufficient to pay the bills, the great platonic community of scholars either has to be reduced in size or work for free, which, despite the lofty ideal of pure intellectual community, I suspect they would be loathe to do. This is an instance where the pesky category of “reality” comes into play. The AAUP report sounds very much like faulting the mayor of Hiroshima for failing to maintain city services in the 45-46 fiscal year.
emigre, at 11:10 am EDT on May 17, 2007
an imperfect storm
as far as Tulane goes— many of us who had already left Tulane pre-Katrina saw that Katrina made easy what we expected Cowen to do (get rid of PhD programs in A+S) As far as UNO? Fortunately for UNO’s administration (typed with great sarcasm), some of the faculty who were summarily dismissed (despite tenure), are no longer with us to make noise.
It is all shameful.
Gone, at 8:10 pm EDT on May 17, 2007
Fiscal realities
It is true, as Emigre points out, that fiscal realities constrain what is possible in higher education, and, as he does not point out, that the cost of higher education has exceeded inflation rates for many years, there are alternatives to consider, even in emergencies. Shorlty after Hutchins assumed the leadership of the University of Chicago, the stockmarket crash diminished the value of the univesity’s endowment by 25%. Hutchins response was to ask the trustees to cut his salary by that amount, to reorder spending priorities, saying, “some things are more important than cutting the grass” and to protect faculty salaries, saying “the faculty are the university.” My experience is that administrative bloat and questionable priorities are more of a problem in higher education than faculty salaries.
Alvin Burstein
Professor emeritus, UTK
President, AAUP Louisiana Conference
Alvin Burstein, at 1:35 pm EDT on May 20, 2007
The indoctrination paradigm
In Socrates’ time, too, some education was seen as dangerous, not because it brainwashed, but because it raised questions. Angell, as president of Yale, said that the purpose of higher education is the unsettling of minds. Raising questions is not always welcomed.
Alvin Burstein
Professor emeritus, UTK
President, Louisiana Chapter, AAUP
Alvin Burstein, at 1:35 pm EDT on May 20, 2007
I agree that Hutchins’ example is a noble one, but alas, a largely symbolic one. The notion of vastly bloated college budgets due to non-faculty expenses is overblown, at least in the vast majority of cases. I have yet to encounter an intsitution where faculty salaries do not make up by far the largest expense, and the only place to make any serious inroads in addressing a deficit. Indeed, the much-noted price rises in higher education have taken place almost entirely to fund faculty salary increases. Eliminating all the “grass-cutters” in most universities would be barely noticeable as a cost-saver. If, however, faculty were to agree to across-the-board salary cuts in lieu of losing positions, it might well make a viable alternative to what happened in New Orleans.
Emigre, at 6:25 pm EDT on May 21, 2007
Also there
The initial comment on this article argues strongly that Tulane (and — given the logical fallacy by which he extends the argument to other Katrina-affected institutions — the other New Orleans universities cited in the AAUP report) adhered to the policies and procedures specified in its Faculty Handbook. What is most evident is that those policies did not conform to AAUP guidelines and also that AAUP guidelines themselves do not envision the sort of calamity that struck New Orleans.
It is in those circumstances that one must look at the intent of the AAUP guidelines which, as Professor Burstein suggests, support the notion of the preservation of the institution rather than its reconstruction. Further, that preservation is to be carried out with the participation of the faculty as one of three major constituencies, the trustees and the administration being the other two.
Rather than recite my own experience in the post-Katrina era, I would like to share the observation of another long-term faculty member who is still at Tulane. He remarked to me that he had always felt that our Faculty Handbook afforded the faculty with a high degree of protection from administrative caprice: For him, the Katrina experience has shown what hollow comfort that protection actually is.
Ed Strong, at 8:35 pm EDT on May 21, 2007
administrative bloat
Emigre argues that cutting faculty salaries is the only way meaningfully to reduce higher education budgets. Surely, he (or she)would agree that such cuts should include administrative salaries and positions as well. That omission in Emigre’s commnent troubles me, especially in the light of the well documented increasing reliance on part time and other non tenure track faculty in American universities. These faculty are paid, of course, at much lower rates.
Alvin Burstein
President, Louisiana Conference, AAUP
Professor emeritus, University of Tennesee, Knoxville
Alvin Burstein, at 11:10 am EDT on May 22, 2007
Absolutely. I concur with Prof. Burstein’s urging that administrative salaries and positions must also be cut in such scenarios. And certainly individual administrative salaries are generally higher than individual faculty salaries. While there is considerable variation among universities, I would still argue in general that as a slice of the whole budget pie, administrative salary costs are a tiny fraction of faculty salary costs. Yes, administrative cuts should be made, but in my view doing so has primarily symbolic value, as a statement that “we’re all in this together.” Symbolism is not insignificant, and is a component of leadership. I think Hutchins, for example, established his bona fides. But as a person having to cut costs significantly, I would look at the faculty portion of the pie chart and say, as Willie Sutton said of banks, “that’s where the money is.”
Emigre, at 1:00 pm EDT on May 24, 2007
Improved finances but no restoration of cuts
To properly assess the changes imposed by administrations on New Orleans institutions by administrations, it is necessary both to look at their genuine financial impact and to follow the finances of the institutions into the present. This is done in the AAUP report but not in all of the comments here. Vast improvements have occurred in institutional finances via greater subsidies from the legislature (in the case of state institutions), insurance payouts (in the case of private institutions), rebounding enrollments, and, sadly, the voluntary resignations of from one-fourth to one-third of faculties. Yet none of the programs and faculty positions cut are even being considered for reinstatement. Why?
Did the post-Katrina changes save money? Certainly some did, but not all. What about other potential cuts, such as from sports, that could have saved educational programs? Faculty flight from many of the New Orleans institutions continues, an important motivation being the protracted and unnecessary elimination of programs and the continued reduction of the faculty role in governance.
As someone who is familiar with the New Orleans institutions and is involved in faculty governance as well as active in the AAUP, I find the AAUP report well-informed and judicious. Further, I don’t understand why no New Orleans institution currently enjoying a returning fiscal health that has been promoted in its own public relations material has considered rescinding any of the cuts to programs and faculties.
Linda Carroll
Linda Carroll, at 11:20 am EDT on May 30, 2007
I would say that the AAUP report, while certainly thoughtful, is a bit selective in what it chooses to underscore. While it is true that many, though not all, of the one-time losses to some universities have been restored to varying degrees, one-time losses were certainly not the big problem. As the continuing recruitment challenges of UNO and Loyola illustrate, we are looking at ongoing, huge revenue gaps, and no one can foretell how long this will be true. If a place like Loyola, for example—highly dependent on tuition revenue, has two more recruiting classes like the past two, its revenue stream will be down 33% or so. That is like being on an airplane with dwindling fuel: you either crash or jettison weight. Those one-time recoups of funding were important, but are only a fragment of the story.
emigre, at 2:50 pm EDT on May 31, 2007
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I Was There
As a faculty member at Tulane who was on the University president’s nine-member faculty advisory committee that was involved deeply in the enitre process Tulane went through in trying to survive the worst natural disaster in US history, I can attest to the fact that the AAUP report was a misleading, factually-incorrect, knee-jerk reaction. The fact that it criticizes every single institution in New Orleans for essentially the same thing suggests that the report is essentially nonsense — it is preposterous to believe that every single university president and senior staff person simply used the fact that New Orleans was devastated to violate the academic freedom protections of their respective faculties. In Tulane’s case, I saw the numbers and was regularly updated as they evolved. The cost to fix-up and remediate our campus ran close to $300 million, and the operating losses in 05-06 alone ran well over another $100 million. The university continues to run operating losses in the $30 million-plus range as it endured significant enrollment losses and is just now starting to regain the confidence of prospective students. And yet despite the threat to very survival of the school, the administration (with the consultation of the faculty advisory committee, three-members of which lost their jobs in the retsructuring) scrupulously adhered to the policies and procedures of the faculty handbook. The AAUP report was simply the mindless regurgitation of misleading information from a group of faculty at each school who love to look for reasons to whine and complain about the administration regardless of the issue. It has forever lost my respect.
Hurricane Victim, at 7:45 am EDT on May 16, 2007