Last Thursday’s negotiation session was devoted to TAUP’s responses to the proposals that the administration put on the table on August 13th.  

Progress was made on a few issues:  

• adding a fact-finding step in grievances
• giving the Provost’s office an option to award half-units of merit without being awarded a whole unit first  in specific circumstances (e. g., for service on university committees)
• removing parts of the contract rendered obsolete by agreed-upon practices and the Janus decision.  

We look forward to continuing to work with the administration to find areas of agreement. 

“The Administration” is not “The University” 

TAUP had to register strong objections to many of the administration’s proposals:

• to remove the rights of our members to grieve discrimination as well as health and safety concerns. The administration believes that the University’s resources and processes for investigating and addressing discrimination and health/safety concerns are sufficient .  There is no reason why pursuing a grievance and utilizing these resources should be exclusive.  TAUP members have the right to seek a remedy through the grievance process in addition to the administrative processes. We see no reason to remove language from the contract that would restrict a critical path of recourse that is available.
• to move Academic Professionals from our bargaining unit to another union 
• to remove Program Directors and those in similar roles entirely from union representation 
• to strip TAUP of its right to an on-campus office and course-releases for service to the Union, rights that have been recognized since 1976 and maintained over decades of intense bargaining
• to exclude work for TAUP as eligible for merit 
• to discontinue a standard workplace practice of giving unions that represent new employees an opportunity to meet with them during or after their new hire orientation. There has been a provision for this in the TAUP contract for over a decade.  It offers an opportunity to welcome new colleagues to campus, inform them of their rights under the contract and encourage them to join the union. 

The administration may claim that these proposals are “aimed at clarifying the union’s independence from the university.”  But there is a difference between “the administration” and “the university.”  TAUP is certainly independent from the administration, but for over 45 years been we have been an essential part of Temple University.  We represent nearly 3000 professionals who are central to Temple’s core missions of teaching, research, and service.  Our contract sets forth the terms not only for wages and benefits but also procedures for tenure and promotion, grievances, and other processes at the heart of the work that the university does.  TAUP is integral to the university. Conversely, we do not believe that there is any confusion in regard to the Union’s independence from the administration that justifies these proposals. 

This is why we see them not as a way to clarify the administration’s and the union’s roles but rather as a way to make it harder for TAUP to do crucial work in representing colleagues whether at the bargaining table or away from it.  

President Englert and Provost Epps phrased the matter well when they wrote that together, TAUP and the administration have been able to realize “our collective mission of providing the best possible education to our students . . .time and again for many years, and that this positive relationship should continue.”  But neither that shared goal nor that relationship is well-served by these proposals. We urge the administration to reconsider. 

We will continue to advocate for our vision of Temple:  For example, we have proposed:

• expanding the number of course releases for service significantly so that all faculty, but especially people of color and women can be properly recognized for how much they do for Temple.  
• limiting the use of student feedback forms for the purpose of promotion, reappointment and tenure. 
• healthy across-the-board and merit raises 
• increased job security for NTTs and adjuncts 
• more tenure-track hiring
• childcare and tuition benefits at other schools
• increased summer pay 
• new protections on intellectual property for course design and materials 

We know that Temple can afford these proposals and can give our colleagues the work environment that they and our students deserve.  

TAUP was pleased to see that President Englert and Provost Epps wrote in their email to members of the TAUP bargaining unit that they are interested in reaching a fair agreement with our faculty, APs and librarians. We are eager to work with the administration toward the goal of a fair contract that improves the working conditions that we teach, research and serve under. 

To achieve this, the University should engage in principled conversations that will provide additional support for our members by moving toward more respect, equity and job security in the workplace, improving the environment for the work we do with our students. 

That is TAUP’s goal, and it is not in conflict with the obligation to prioritize our students’ needs, as the President and Provost’s email implies. In fact, the opposite is true:  students benefit when our working environment improves, and our proposals respond to the need for a more equitable and student-centered University. 

We received a letter from a member shortly after they read the administration’s email. He wrote:

“Students’ best interests aren’t being served when NTT’s have no real job security outside that provided in their renewable contracts and adjunct faculty have no job security whatsoever outside their semester-long appointments because it does not allow us to focus fully on the quality education Temple claims we are providing.”  

The same can be said for their rejection of our proposal for a 1% increase in tenure-track hiring for each year of the contract.

 

Financial Concerns

Although the President and the Provost allude to strains on Temple’s budget, the fact is that Temple has enjoyed many years of sharply increasing revenues but has maintained a flat rate in the percentage of the budget spent on instruction. 

Student enrollments and state support are ongoing concerns, but despite earlier reports, according to the university’s current budget (see p. 2), the state allocation increased by 2% this year and the number of incoming students is projected to remain the same as last year’s, though the graduating class was unusually large as a result of Fly in- 4. 

A study conducted by the Century Foundation showed that last year Temple University came in dead last among public Research 1 schools when it came to the percentage of tuition and fees spent on instruction, just $0.61 for every $1.00 collected. (click here for a table of this data; to use the lookup tool yourself, click here)

Where is the rest of the money going? We have some answers to that question we’ll be sharing in future communications.  But we are certain that the administration has the funds to agree to our reasonable proposals to improve working conditions and the educational environment at the university.  

You can expect, however, that they’ll say that it can’t be done without negative consequences for students, or that a benefit to one of the union’s constituent groups will have to hurt another. 

We know that does not need to be the case:  Temple’s administration can respond productively to our proposals without hurting students if they make decisions that prioritize research, creative activity, service, and teaching–the core missions of the university.  Temple can do it, if the administration chooses to.

 

TAUP’s Role at the University

The administration has presented proposals that suggests that TAUP’s advocacy is extraneous to Temple’s core missions. As the exclusive negotiator for faculty, librarians, and AP’s we know that the contract we bargain deeply affects the inner workings of this university. Things like access to healthcare, your ability to file a grievance if the terms of the contract are violated, and a living wage for faculty and staff comes directly from the work of your colleagues in TAUP. Our Constitution declares and our 45-plus-year history proves that  we are committed to improving the working conditions of our members, the learning conditions of students, and the well-being of the wider community. 

We are eager to work with the administration toward those goals and hope that tomorrow’s negotiations will be productive.

Temple vs. Other R1/Very High Research Public Universities:  $ on Instruction/$ from Tuition and Fees

The following table derives from a tool created by The Century Foundation, which uses the most recent data available reported by universities to the U.S. Department of Education to show “how much a school spends on student instruction—that is, what they invest in the faculty and resources required to offer coursework—relative to what a student pays in tuition and fees.” We recommend visiting the site for a fuller explanation of the aim and methodology.   Many universities spend more than $1.00 because they draw on other sources, including state and federal support and endowments.  Note: Some R1s are not included because they do not show up in the data.

R1/Very High Research is a classification from the Carnegie Foundation.

It is not TAUP’s claim that the ranking here indicates educational quality.  But the fact that Temple is dead last and that it is much closer to the average of for-profit institutions than other public institutions or R1s is deeply troubling.  It argues strongly that Temple is not spending enough of the money it collects from students on supporting its faculty, librarians, and academic professionals in the work they do with students.  Even small adjustments in this ratio would make large differences.  In FY 2016, Temple collected just over $796 million dollars in tuition and fees minus scholarships.  So every cent on the dollar more spent on instruction would mean approximately $7.96 million.

Temple	0.61
Arizona State	0.65
Colorado State-Fort Collins	0.65
University of North Texas	0.65
University of California-Santa Cruz	0.75
University of Houston	0.76
University of Arizona	0.77
Auburn	0.78
Clemson	0.78
Montana State	0.78
Texas Tech	0.78
Penn State	0.79
University of Georgia	0.81
West Virginia	0.81
University of California-Santa Barbara	0.84
IU-Bloomington	0.85
University of New Hampshire	0.85
University of Colorado-Boulder	0.87
University of Oregon	0.87
Michigan State	0.89
Oklahoma State	0.89
University of Cincinnati	0.91
Virginia Tech	0.91
Georgia State	0.92
Georgia Tech	0.92
Louisiana State-Baton Rouge	0.94
University of South Carolina-Columbia	0.94
New Jersey Institute of Technology	0.95
Oregon State	0.95
University of California-Berkeley	0.99
University of Delaware	0.99
University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign	0.99
University of Kentucky	0.99
University of Iowa	1.01
University of Oklahoma-Norman	1.01
University of Pittsburgh	1.01
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee	1.03
George Mason	1.04
Mississippi State	1.05
University of Maryland-College Park	1.05
Kansas State	1.07
University of Missouri-Columbia	1.07
Median	1.07
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor	1.09
UC-Riverside	1.12
Wayne State	1.13
Purdue-Main Campus	1.16
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities	1.16
Florida International University	1.18
University of Wisconsin-Madison	1.19
Washington State	1.20
Ohio State–Main Campus	1.21
University of Central Florida	1.23
University of Nebraska-Lincoln	1.23
Virginia Commonwealth	1.24
University of Massachusetts-Amherst	1.25
University of Mississippi	1.25
Rutgers-New Brunswick	1.29
University of Southern Missippi	1.32
University of Utah	1.34
University of Nevada-Las Vegas	1.36
University of South Florida	1.37
University of Louisville	1.38
University of California-Irvine	1.45
University of Kansas	1.48
Texas A and M	1.49
University of California-San Diego	1.52
University of Washington-Seattle	1.53
University of Connecticut	1.58
Florida State	1.61
University of California-Davis	1.62
North Carolina State	1.63
University at Buffalo	1.78
University of Florida	1.82
University of North Carolina-Chapel  Hill	1.88
SUNY at Albany	1.96
University of Hawaii-Manoa	1.97
University of Nevada-Reno	2.04
Stony Brook University	2.11
University of Colorado-Denver	2.11
University of New Mexico	2.30
University of Illinois-Chicago	2.34
University of California-Los Angeles	2.70
CUNY Graduate School	5.79
Average R1	1.26
Median R1	1.07
Average Public Institution	1.42
Average For Profit	0.29