Text of EVP Furmanski's October 11, 2010 Email to Paul Panayotatos Explaining and Transmitting
an Update to the 1999 Report on Balance of Full-time & Part-time Faculty Teaching at Rutgers University
In response to the Executive Committee's request at the
September meeting for an update to the 1999 Report on Balance of
Full-time & Part-time Faculty Teaching at Rutgers University, I am
attaching a series of tables that parallel the data presented in that
report to the best of our ability. The 1999 report calculated teaching
distributions in terms of IUs (Instructional Units). We no longer
calculate IUs, but have adopted a system that uses SCHs (Student Credit
Hours) instead. The difference between the two measures follows:
IUs were weighted by a factor depending on the mode of instruction in
each course section. For example, a laboratory section would get 1/3 the
weight of a lecture section. Student Credit Hours (SCHs) use the
assigned unweighted credit value of the course. Therefore, SCHs can take
into account the courses with no defined time periods (such as "by
arrangement" or TBD) by using the credit value of all the students that
received credit for the course. We switched from calculating IUs to
using SCHs because the latter is easier to understand, and tends to be
the standard at other institutions, thus allowing for more direct
comparisons.
The first attachment presents the distribution of SCHs by instructor
type for the last four years; data for the university as a whole and for
each campus are presented. In interpreting the data, please note that
credit hours earned in online or hybrid courses or at off-campus
locations are not included. With respect to instructor type, full-time
"other" instructors include post-doctoral faculty and fellows who are
teaching, visiting faculty, and teaching done by full-time
administrators and professional staff; part-time "other" instructors
include adjuncts (primarily at the Law Schools) and other part-time
employees who are not part of the PTL bargaining unit. In trying to
discern trends in the data over time, I call your attention to the small
table under the universitywide distribution. This table presents the
total earned SCHs in each year (and indicates increasing SCHs over time
in accordance with increased enrollments), and the % of data captured in
the distribution tables. Note that the data is annually collected by
Institutional Research from departments and schools and that the
reporting rate varies considerably from year to year, complicating over
time comparisons.
The second attachment presents data comparing Rutgers to other AAU
publics on average numbers of PTLs, TAs, and GAs employed in the last
four years, and the ratios of PTLs to TAs, and PTLs to TA/GAs. In
keeping with earlier findings, these tables suggest that Rutgers is
different from its AAU peers in the balance of PTLs and TAs it employs.
As in the past, the analysis of these data must take into account that
some percentage of the employed PTLs are advanced graduate students who
have exhausted their university support as TAs or GAs, but wish to
continue teaching for financial or educational reasons.
I hope you find the attached tables useful. Should you have questions
about the data or would like to request additional data or other
configurations of these data, please let me know.
Thanks and all best, Phil