One Faculty
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Shared Governance
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One Faculty 〰️ Shared Governance 〰️
One Faculty
The AAUP has worked to improve working conditions for all faculty, whether on or off the tenure track, since its formation in 1915.
Core principles of the One Faculty campaign include:
We define as “faculty” all those whose appointments consist primarily of teaching or research activities conducted at a professional level, including tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty, full-time and part-time faculty, and most librarians, research and teaching assistants, and postdocs. If you do the work, then you are faculty, regardless of the title assigned by the administration.
The best way to halt the erosion of tenure and to extend economic security and other rights to contingent faculty is by organizing and using our collective strength—working together in solidarity across faculty ranks.
The participation of all faculty in shared governance strengthens the faculty’s voice. Curricular and other academic decisions benefit from the participation of all faculty, including those who teach core courses. If the voices of faculty on contingent appointments are left out of the governance process, then so are the needs of the students they serve.
Academic freedom is key to quality higher education, and it rests on economic security and due process protections for all faculty. In their strongest form, we call these tenure. Where provisions for tenure don’t exist, our goal is to move the terms of faculty appointments closer to it by establishing longer terms of appointment, opportunities for advancement through ranks, due-process protections, recognition of seniority, and conscientious peer evaluation.
All faculty on part-time appointments, after a number of appropriate successive reviews for reappointments, should have assurance of continuing employment.
Compensation should be equitable, and all faculty should be paid a living wage. Positions that involve comparable responsibilities and qualifications should be comparably compensated. Compensation for part-time appointments, including those in which faculty are currently paid on a per-course or per-hour basis, should be the applicable fraction of the compensation (including benefits) for a comparable full-time position.
Read more from the AAUP on One Faculty (members only link)
Shared Governance
The AAUP defines shared governance as meaningful faculty participation in institutional governance. The classic conception of shared governance was articulated in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, jointly formulated by the Association of Governing Boards of American Colleges and Universities (AGB), the American Council on Education (ACE), and the AAUP. These standards are:
The role of the governing board is to ensure that the institution stays true to its mission, to play a major role in ensuring that the institution has the financial resources it needs to operate successfully, to possess final decision-making authority, and to entrust the conduct of administration to the administrative officers.
The role of the president is to be the chief executive officer of the institution, to ensure that the operation of the institution conforms to the policies set forth by the governing board and to sound academic practice, to provide institutional leadership, to make sure there is effective communication between components of the institution, and to represent the institution to its many publics.
The role of the faculty is to have primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process. The responsibility for faculty status includes appointments, reappointments, decisions not to reappoint, promotions, the granting of tenure, and dismissal.
Why should the faculty voice be authoritative in the academic area?
Faculty have special training and knowledge that make them distinctly qualified to exercise decision-making authority in their areas of expertise. And they are best qualified to judge the competence and effectiveness of fellow faculty members.
The faculty’s “judgment is central to general educational policy.”
Scholars in a particular field or activity “have the chief competence for judging the work of their colleagues.”
Why should students and the community care about shared governance?
Allowing faculty to make academic decisions ensures that those decisions are informed by educational and academic considerations, not just the bottom line. In the plain words of one of the twentieth century’s great university presidents, “we get the best results in education and research if we leave their management to people who know something about them” (Robert Maynard Hutchins, Higher Learning in America, Yale, 1936, p. 21).
Read more from the AAUP on Shared Governance