Last week, an overwhelming majority of teaching faculty who are a part of the Wright State chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have signed onto a pledge to reject any contracts they determine to be unfair to WSU faculty.
More than 82 percent of members signed the pledge, according according to a recent press release.
“Over the last two years, the university has eliminated more than ten percent of its teaching faculty through attrition,” stated Martin Kich, AAUP-WSU president, in the press release. “The Board and administration now seem to want to gut the faculty contract to allow for further, rapid reductions in the number of teaching faculty simply to meet immediate budget targets.”
This announcement was made as the university continues its attempts for budgetary remediation. Some faculty members are concerned about the security of their positions because of contract negotiations, according to a report by WDTN.
The pledge is intended to signal that the faculty will not accept any contracts that make further cuts to teaching at the university. Measures which make more cuts to instruction would negatively impact the quality of education and the university’s primary sources of revenue, according to the press release.
Over the time span of four or five years, administration exhausted over $100 million in reserves, with the Board of Trustees’ approval, according to the press release.
“We are concerned that quality of instruction will be compromised in order to sustain a variety of schemes that were supposed to produce additional revenue streams for the university but have instead, without exception, cost the university tens of millions of dollars,” said Kich in the press release.
The status quo for higher education is changing, according to a statement from Wright State President Cheryl Schrader in WTDN. “A confluence of factors is driving academe and our university to do things differently,” she stated. “Changes are required not just in how we engage students in the classroom or conduct meaningful research in the laboratory, but also in how we do business.”
“[Administration] seem very willing to ignore the longer-term consequences of having dramatically fewer full-time faculty–less expertise and fewer and larger classes. That’s not the ‘fix’ WSU needs,” said Kich in the press release.
