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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

What’s going on at Catholic University in Washington, DC?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MAY 4–MORE COMMENTS WELCOME

They're slashing the full-time faculty by 9%, including some "involuntary" terminations.  I've heard that Philosophy is likely to fare rather well during this transition, but I don't know details.  More information welcome in the comments.

UPDATE:  CHE has more:

A faculty committee at Catholic University of America this week resisted a controversial cost-cutting proposal that would eliminate 35 full-time professors, including those with tenure.

The report of an ad hoc committee, published late Wednesday night, is a forceful rebuke of key components of a long-simmering layoff plan that has sown division at the university, which is based in Washington, D.C., and was founded by American Roman Catholic bishops.

In its report, which was provided to The Chronicle by a professor, the committee questions whether the university has the authority to lay off tenured faculty members without either cause, a declaration of financial exigency, or the elimination of programs….

Professors at Catholic University, most of whom declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, describe the academic-renewal proposal as a particularly cold instrument that disguises a calculated layoff plan with a lot of high-minded talk about raising the university’s national profile. The provost has pushed back against that sentiment, characterizing the proposal’s critics as a vocal minority.

A key component of the plan mandates higher teaching loads for professors who work exclusively with undergraduates, freeing up those in doctoral and professional programs to teach less. If that comes to pass, consultants told the university, Catholic would have “surplus faculty” in some areas who could be laid off without reducing course offerings or cutting programs.

It's my understanding that this new caste system would benefit the School of Philosophy at Catholic U, which apparently has very close ties to the Catholic Church as well.

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12 responses to “What’s going on at Catholic University in Washington, DC?”

  1. SC

    Please see savecatholic.com for more information.

    Reply
  2. along_the_shore

    University of Montana firing 50 professors, pretending fiscal austerity again.

    https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/991716127431643137

    http://www.umt.edu/president/UM%20Strategy%20for%20Distinction%20/StrategyforDistinctionDRAFT_4.17.18-2.pdf

    Reply
  3. thinkuh

    Wow, UM has really taken the cake for the most egregious recent example of how bad things have gotten.
    The Board of Regents, or Trustees, or those responsible for selecting a new president chose a 39 year old who doesn't know how to write an academic cv. And on his own cv slid over the distinction between the position one starts at, and the position one ends up at, not distinguishing the periods or promotions to each rank.
    39 years old and president of a major public university without a phd. Clearly they wanted a hatchet man. What a chump.

    Here's an idea, if you want to make your university more efficient , fire two administrators at equal salary to every one faculty member you fire.

    Every article on these hatchet jobs citing managers' tears over budget and low enrollments should cite the growth in the percentage administration has taken with respect to a University's budget since 1990. They should then cite the real growth in faculty salaries in that same time, plus tuition increase.

    Why don't these frat boys stick to the private sector? Seriously, why do I need all these corporate administrators wasting the university's time trying to prove they did something in their Associate vice assistant to the Vice Provost position so they can climb the ladder. All they do is engineer cutting labor costs (read 'faculty employment security') and introduce 'programs' which engender major faculty labor wasting 'self-assessment' exercises, put massive faith in student (read 'customer') satisfaction surveys that they can show to their boss or another employer to climb up another rung. And it's all driven by an absurd US News ranking system.
    Oh, but if you choose to opt out of the ranking race you get punished because we have created incentives for students to pay into the same US News ranking system.
    And then these same administrators end up gaming that system with fraudulent claims to boost their rank. Which they then put on their cv to get a promotion.

    All that is solid melts into air I guess, (Happy birthday, KM!).
    But it's a goddamn shame.

    Reply
  4. alum

    Saying that the School of Philosophy at CUA "has very close ties to the Catholic Church" is not really the right way to put it. The School of Philosophy is designated as an Ecclesiastical Faculty, i.e. a faculty "canonically erected or approved by the Apostolic See, which foster[s] and teach[es] sacred doctrine and the sciences connected therewith, and which [has] the right to confer academic degrees by the authority of the Holy See".[1] In practice, one thing this means is that the SP offers a degree of PhL, or Licentiate in Philosophy, where in this context a Licentiate is a special sort of degree awarded by the Vatican that grants an official "license" to teach philosophy in a Catholic university or seminary.[2] They also play an important role in educating Catholic seminarians through a prestigious fellowship program that sends seminarians to CUA to study philosophy there.[3] Finally, it's true that most (all?) of the faculty in the SP are Catholic, and that a large part of what they do is centered around a quite conservative form of Thomism.

    In the present context, the largest effect that these changes would have on the School of Philosophy is the reduction of faculty teaching loads from (I think) 3-2 to 2-2. Something like this is surely a good idea (I cannot imagine supervising doctoral students while teaching 3-2 and having all of the grading and service responsibilities that they do there), but I'm told that to some degree this is taken care of already by offering course reductions on a case-by-case basis. It could be that the SP's — how shall we say? — distinctive contribution to the university's Catholic mission is part of why they're getting this benefit, but I don't see any reason to believe this, and there are plenty of other programs and departments in the university that will benefit as well. It's worth noting too that the SP faculty have come out officially against the termination of tenured faculty: see p. 39 in [4].

    [1] http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/how-we-teach/catholic-education/higher-education/clarifying-terms-ecclesiastical-faculties-granting-canonical-degrees.cfm
    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licentiate_(degree)#Pontifical_universities
    [3] http://philosophy.cua.edu/academic/grad/PhilosophyBasselinInfo.cfm
    [4] https://savecatholic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Appendices-to-AHC-Report-.pdf

    Reply
  5. UMGrad

    What's happening at UM is a tragedy, but it is a special case. Krakauer's book is probably the single biggest cause of the drastic decline in enrollment there. It's gutted the school. Perhaps that is justice; I don't know. Either way, it breaks my heart.

    Reply
  6. harry b

    "Here's an idea, if you want to make your university more efficient , fire two administrators at equal salary to every one faculty member you fire. Every article on these hatchet jobs citing managers' tears over budget and low enrollments should cite the growth in the percentage administration has taken with respect to a University's budget since 1990. They should then cite the real growth in faculty salaries in that same time, plus tuition increase."

    On our campus, and probably yours, staff classified as administrative almost all earn less than almost all faculty. The main reason for the increase in ratios of admin to faculty are i) reclassification of jobs into the admin category; ii) growth of jobs that count as admin (eg tech support) and, iii) growth of student services in response to changing demographics of the students (eg increased numbers of first gen, minority and low income students who need advising and support beyond what their parents can give and their professors are willing to give). See Bowen and McPherson, Lesson Plan, for details.

    Let these articles to talk about the relative and absolute growth of the admin category, if they also explain it, and explain what cuts in admin staff to make way for more faculty would really mean for students (on my campus, and probably yours, lower success rates for first generation, minority, and low-income students — personally, a cost I wouldn't welcome).

    I don't know the details at UM or CUA. UM sounds like a complete disaster, which has nothing to do with the growth of admin.

    Reply
  7. anon

    Here is the text of the CU School of Philosophy's statement on "Academic Renewal" dealing only with the matter of terminating tenured faculty. There's no real defense of the principle of tenure; instead the professors voice concern over legal and ethical inconsistencies, but focus mainly on undesirable outcomes (e.g., bad PR). One might have hoped for a less narrowly legalist and consequentialist response from this faculty, and a defense of departments that stand to be harmed by the proposal. More typically, it is liberal arts departments that come rushing to the defense of beleaguered philosophy units; here, silence in the expectation of benefits. To hold that much of the fluff, not to mention the downright dishonesty* of the "Academic Renewal" proposal (starting with its very name) as being propitious for the university's future defies logic.

    *see savecatholic.com
    ____________________________
    To: Andrew Abela, Provost
    Gregory Doolan, Chairperson of Ad Hoc Senate Committee on Academic Renewal
    Date: Friday, April 27, 2018

    The Senior Faculty of the School of Philosophy has met to discuss the Academic Renewal Proposal.
    We agree that, on the whole, the proposal contains important ideas that will help the University
    address some of its central challenges. Focusing here on the provisions in the Proposal whereby
    tenured appointments would be terminated involuntarily, we wish to say that we find those
    provisions to be problematic for the following reasons:
    1) Despite the efforts to conform to the Handbook, these provisions clearly deviate from the
    terms of the Handbook. We are concerned that terminating tenured appointments in this
    way is inconsistent with the University’s legal and ethical obligations to honor contracts.
    2) Terminating tenured appointments in this way will make attracting and retaining excellent
    faculty more difficult.
    3) Terminating tenured appointments in this way will produce an appearance of instability and
    controversy, making it difficult to attract students and donors.
    4) Terminating tenured appointments in this way will have a negative impact on the morale of
    current faculty, whose morale is already weakened by financial measures taken over the past
    few years.
    The Academic Renewal Proposal can achieve much good. It would be a shame were it to be
    undermined by problems resulting from the termination of tenured appointments as envisioned in
    the Proposal. Other ways to cut costs ought to be found.

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    I am an alum of this school from the 2000's so my input here is a tad speculative. Anyone more in-the-know on these issues is welcome to correct me.

    Notwithstanding the input others have already offered, the general situation of the University having money trouble would appear to stem from banking too heavily on continued growth of undergraduate enrollment and thus, the revenue stream that comes with that. Up until the last decade or so, CUA had always been more of a graduate school, with a modest but still relatively small undergraduate offering on the side. With the new president who came in around 2009/10, there was a much stronger push to grow the undergraduate side. So, it's not surprising that perhaps CUA's undergraduate draw is at its peak. It doesn't help that CUA's student recruiting pool is rather narrow and self-selected. The University has also poured tons of money into new facilities and land acquisition in the last decade, which surely has increased the debt load considerably. (Whereas, when I first visited the place circa 2000, the majority of buildings and facilities were in serious need of modernizing, unlike any other university I have ever been.)

    It does sound as if Philosophy at CUA is likely to come out of this situation fine. When I was an instructor, most undergraduates were required to take two philosophy courses as part of their first-year core. Plus, as another commenter noted, Philosophy at CUA also serves seminarians and other special populations associated with the University.

    Reply
  9. alum (same as 4)

    According to this extensive analysis by Michael Mack, who is Associate Professor of English at CUA, the current crisis at the university is largely attributable to the current administration (or at least it has happened on their watch), and the admin's attempt to pin the need for "academic renewal" to structural changes in the overall landscape of higher ed. shows that they are either dishonest or grossly incompetent: https://savecatholic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Presentation-on-AR-Proposal-FINAL.pdf

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    "Until the last decade or so, CUA had always been more of a graduate school…". Nope. CU was founded as a center for graduate studies in 1887, but it has had undergrads since 1904, and a very large undergrad component for decades and decades. I've taught there for 3 decades and it has ALWAYS been the case that half or more of the student body is undergraduate (and it is more now). CU has been undergraduate tuition dependent for a very, very long time.

    Reply
  11. still tenured

    Update: Tenure under full assault. This afternoon's Chronicle: https://tinyurl.com/y9452lz8

    Reply
  12. thinkuh

    Very well, and thanks for reining me in a bit.
    However, I would beg to differ regarding the economics of faculty versus admin. While it may remain true that in absolute numbers that tenured and tenure track faculty make more than many administrative staff, it is precisely the move to cheaper labor while growing the administrative staff that makes the picture more complicated. Look at the skyrocketing number of courses by adjuncts across the board, and the use of contract faculty for teaching. At my institution in New York City, the baseline for new non-tenure track contract faculty is 63K and I can assure you, full time administrative staff start at higher level , by far. But we are the fastest growing area of faculty. Very hard to remain as sanguine about the question of faculty versus administrative salaries looking at this typical example of larger national trends.
    I am of two minds about growth in student services. Yes to facilitating underrepresented and first-generation students with educational guidance, including advising and promoting student success. Writing centers are a great example of this. However, the US News and World report rankings race also promotes providing an 'experience' for students that involves massive plant expenditures for state of the art gyms, football stadiums, on campus cinemas, student centers, entertainment budgets, etc. Administrators make these decisions.
    Also the will of faculty to give the support to students is highly constrained by parameters that are beyond the faculty's control, including burgeoning bureaucratic and administrative duties, increased pressure for grants, etc. These are duties that have increased on top of the previous model where research, service and teaching rounded out a full time job. Unfortunately, there are not more hours in the day to accommodate these additional expectations.
    However, if given a choice between taking an additional percentage of salary to take on advising duties that are geared to maintain and improve non-traditional student success, I think you would be surprised at those who would sign up for it.
    As for administrative cuts and their impact, I think that would be a significant curtailing of what we expect a university to be along the lines of the 'experience' budget that has grown wildly out of control. Now, however, the competitive corporate model has universities behaving exactly like corporations hustling for market share, that is then tapped for growing to compete with other university's hustling for market share, all tied to a rankings system.
    At any rate, you are right to highlight the benefits of an increased administrative staff have brought the educational aims of the university in a democratic society, but I would insist that this cannot be decoupled from faculty cuts, adjunctification, etc.

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