The least painful way to manage faculty costs is to not fill the wrong positions in the first place. This means that provosts and their teams have to wrestle with deciding which open positions to fill and which to leave unfilled. Here are seven questions that will make it less painful.
Enrollment Trends
What has been the enrollment trend in this department’s courses? Note that this trend has little to do with the number of majors in the department, or who has been teaching each course. Instead, this means tracking the student credit hours delivered by the department. If the long-term trend is upward, that would point to filling the position.
Costs per Student Credit Hour
How high are costs per student credit hour (SCH) in this department? Compare costs per student credit hour (SCH) with other departments and for comparable subjects at other institutions, controlling for course level. If costs are already high, this would indicate that the position should not be filled.
Faculty Release Time
How much full-time faculty time is being used for something other than teaching or funded research? If release time or unallocated time (the gap between expected workload and actual workload plus release time) is excessive, this indicates excess capacity that may obviate the need to fill the position.
Course Content and Capacity
Are courses with similar content and sufficient capacity available from other departments? Departments may offer general education courses that overlap with offerings from other departments, or they may have a different version of a subject like Statistics that could be consolidated with another department’s course. In such situations, offering these courses in the department may be unnecessary, which would reduce the need to hire.
Creating a Workable Plan
Can there be a workable plan if the position is not filled? Between reducing sections taught, reducing releases and unallocated time, or backfilling with adjuncts or overload, can the department teach its necessary classes if the position is left open?
Institutional Investment
Has the institution made an explicit decision to invest in this area? If the institution has already decided, as part of its program strategy, to allocate funds to increase its capacity in a specific area, this would indicate that the position should be filled.
Unique Skills
Does the institution need to replace unique skills or capabilities? Sometimes, a faculty member who leaves is the sole person with specialized knowledge or skills that the institution needs. In such a case, the institution may need to hire a replacement faculty member with these capabilities or otherwise fill that gap.
Truth and Consequences
Note that these questions assume that the decision-makers can easily track and compare actual credit hours delivered, instructional costs, and faculty workloads. This data enables reviewing trends over time and making valid comparisons with internal and external benchmarks.
Developing the capability to do this kind of analysis does take a commitment of resources –money, time, and attention. However, most colleges and universities don’t have unlimited runway to get their budgets in balance. The real choice is whether to do this to lengthen the runway, or to deal with the consequences at the end of the runway.
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