Prof. Maureen Chalmers: Board of Regents gets an F.
A dozen professors and students blasted cost-cutting measures planned by the Connecticut Board of Regents for cost-cutting measures — including a proposed contract under negotiation — as a disinvestment in faculty well-being, student advising, and the quality of education.
The board convened for a regular meeting on Thursday morning via WebEx. During the portion of the meeting allocated for public comment, it received backlash regarding the board’s drafted contract for professors.
Professors have critiqued the proposed contract partly because of a requirement that they increase their teaching load to five courses per semester, up from the current requirement of four.
The contract would also reduce funding for faculty research, dissolve faculty committees providing input on tenure and promotion, mandate ten office hours per week, and permit universities to schedule classes until 6 p.m. or on weekends, according to Inside Higher Ed.
While union negotiations are typically a private process, professors have publicly aired critiques of the proposed contract in the past few weeks — prompting Leigh Appleby, the system office’s spokesperson, to accuse professors of “whin[ing] publicly rather than negotiat[ing] in good faith.”
Christopher Douçot, who has worked as a part-time faculty member at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) for 12 years, expressed outrage at those comments.
“At the start of this semester, I was hospitalized and nearly died,” Douçot shared. “But since part-time faculty do not accrue sick time, I chose to teach some of my classes from a hospital bed rather than risk losing my job.”
“Does demanding sick time sound like whining to you?” he asked the board.
John O’Connor, a sociology professor at CCSU, slammed the board’s emphasis on cost reduction as disastrous for the institutions.
“At a time when students and faculty in our institutions are stressed and unsettled due to Covid, job loss, and racial injustice, your response is to blow it all up and burn it all down,” he said. “You are leaving them a shell of a university.”
“We are just a column in your spreadsheets,” O’Connor added about his fellow professors. He set his virtual background to project the images of supporting colleagues at a virtual gathering.
Robert Forbus, a business school professor at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU), argued that with the increased teaching load of five classes per semester, “it will be nearly impossible for faculty to continue to publish and teach more classes.” This could risk the universities’ business school accreditation, he said.
Stephen Monroe Tomczak, a professor at SCSU, criticized the increased efforts to save costs as coinciding with an increasing proportion of students of color attending the universities.
“I find it frankly appalling that as our student populations has become more diverse, as we have transitioned from having a student body composed of young people who look like me to much larger proportions of students of color, there has been a steady disinvestment from higher education,” Tomczak, who is white, told the Board of Regents.
Several students testified in support of the professors’ unions as well, maintaining that professors have been vital for students’ well-being particularly during the period of online classes that the pandemic has brought about.
Miles Goritski, a senior at SCSU, noted that professors’ time and flexibility to mentor students was a crucial part of his experience. “Having someone who really cares about me on the other side of that Zoom call or email makes a big difference,” he said. “It’s critical for professors to have the time and resources to give students the mentorship they deserve.”
In response, Mark Ojakian, president of Connecticut State Colleges & Universities, criticized the professors’ public airing of their complaints.
“We do not negotiate our contracts in the press or in public comments,” he said. “We engage in good faith negotiations at the bargaining table, not in the court of public opinion.”
Ojakian argued that cost-cutting measures across the universities are necessary in order to prevent students and their families from bearing the financial burden of university operations in the form of tuition or room and board increases.
“Even before the pandemic hit us, our financial position was not sustainable,” Ojakian said. “Covid has further eroded not only our financial position but that of our students and their families as well. We cannot continue to put the increasing costs of our system onto the backs of our students when they are struggling the most.”
Prof. John O’Connor, with the faces of dozens of other professors in the background.
Pofessors aired concerns at the Regents meeting about other cost-saving measures as well.
Maureen Chalmers, president of the 4C’s union representing Connecticut community college professors, took the floor to criticize the forthcoming consolidation of the state’s twelve community colleges into one entity. Chalmers held up a sheet with a failing “grade” to her Zoom camera to describe her thoughts on the Board of Regents’ governance over community colleges, noting that every faculty senate of a Connecticut community college had voted “no confidence” in the consolidation plan.
Chalmers argued that relationships between the faculty of her institution, Northwestern Community College, and the increasingly centralized administration has deteriorated under statewide officials’ leadership.
“We had a community college that was collegial, respectful, collaborative on all levels,” she said. “We have completely gone straight off that path.”
Chair of the Board of Regents Matt Fleury suggested that the need for fiscal restraint driving both the contract proposal and the community college consolidation plan derives from a lack of adequate funding from the state. Those funding decisions are out of the Regents’ control, he argued.
“This board has nothing to say about the level of taxation and the allocation of tax funds to higher education — other than to be a very strong advocate for that,” he said.
Connecticut's higher education system is massively overbuilt. It needs to be cut. Demand is so low that colleges near our borders admit out-of-state students at in-state rates. Lots of courses, especially in the community colleges, are duplicative of high school courses. Whole departments seemed focused on providing employment for faculty rather than preparing students for a jobs whose benefits can justify the cost of their education, both to themselves and to the taxpayers.