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Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Now that this Fall semester is nearly over--only about 3-1/2 hours left to post grades--how was it for you all? How do you feel the quality of your teaching was under Scarborough's "maximum usage" plan? (I thought of it when I saw this picture.)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll be anonymously open - I reduced the standards and work for each class, watered them down (a second time) as it were, and the gossip around the coffee maker is this is what a lot did in reaction to increased workload and increased class size. I'd guess-timate that the same % of students failed any given class, but that I gave a larger % of B's and A's than in the past and required significantly less work. That's been my response to each phase of increased workload.

Anonymous said...

Just wondering what was your fall teaching load before (2? 3?) and what was it increased to starting fall 2013? Any how many total students did you teach before and how many this fall? For example, if you added one class and 20 students how much more work did that require, was it a new course prep? And any teaching load is relative to total workload (including research and service) did it occur to you to reduce service and research in order to make sure your students are served well and appropriately since the state and student tuition pays you to teach (especially if you are already tenured? As much as UT faculty (and I am one) complain about teaching loads, look around at our peer institutions and compare teaching loads as many tenured/tenure track faculty at mid sized public state universities are teaching same or even higher loads.

Anonymous said...

Comparative trivialization of situations is not meaningful because it begs the larger questions of why this phenomenon has been occurring in education over the last several decades. That is more demands and less support. It has been because of a political right wing that has been increasingly hostile to education and government in general. It seems to have peeked under the Koch brothers and the Tea Party who have been funding their own think tanks, groups, and politicians in order to further their aims of getting the nation back to some imaginary libertarian garden of Eden that they somehow believe existed. Our educational systems will take generations to heal from their methods of starvation and horse whipping of it in order to somehow "straighten it out."

Anonymous said...

I can't speak for other departments, but in mine the committee work has increased, by as much as 1/3-1/2 in the last few years, as a consequence of people leaving and not being replaced. I've been committee chair on a departmental committee or two or three, twice as much in the last couple of years as I was in the previous 5, because everyone else on the committee in question was already chairing at least one committee or two or three. And then if you hold on to some idealistic idea of shared governance, there are the university committees. Also an increase there because of the warm body issue in my dept. And I almost forgot to mention the various BS that the admins send around every year, that require ad hoc committees, which has also doubled in recent years. And again, in my department, the policy is people who are research active receive some course relief - but the bar is very high, so only a few receive it. So, teaching workload and students increased, service (especially inter-departmental) increased, and the only carrot being held out is some course relief if you are research active. Catch-22 if you ask me. Moreover, the same formula that requires service, teaching, and pubs for tenure and promotion is still in effect, so officially the increase in teaching load does not support slacking off in one or both of the other areas. Officially, your still expected to be doing as much service and research as ever while teaching more classes with larger class sizes. Does not surprise me at all, and I've heard it as well around the water fountain, that a goodly number of people are cutting back course requirements. It's really, under current policy, the only place you can cut back. The issue here isn't lack of funds it's where funds are being used and misused and just dropped down the toilet.

Anonymous said...

fewer staff and faculty, more demands on time, more requirement to be met, these are occurring everywhere in high education, public sector and in the private sector, not just here at UT - just talk to those at other colleges but in other jobs and careers. As to lack of support for high education that trend goes back at least a decade including in states that were controlled by pro-education Democrats including here in Ohio - simply look at the last 5 state budgets for that data. The Koch Brothers and Tea Party may have a had a more recent influence but the pressure on state budgets and the decision to cut higher ed is a much longer and more complicated story.

Anonymous said...

Things are pretty bad here at UT, in large part because administration is more focused on keeping its fat salaries and perks than it is on funding quality education. How hard does Jacobs work to raise money for the university? How hard does he push back against state funding cuts? When was the last time he testified against state cuts and reformulations of funding formulas? These cuts are just an excuse for him to strangle faculty, insist that faculty do more with less while administration does less with more. There is money on this campus, just not for teaching and learning.

Anonymous said...

OK, he has figured out the state funding formula does not work. we have many Phd's. .How many does it take to beat an Md?

Anonymous said...

I like your cartoon. It describes me so well. I am tired not only of the increased workload and students who can't believe they really need to do some work, but also of the corruption and incompetence of those above me in the hierarchy. I need this job, though--otherwise I'd have quit. And I used to love it.