1. When Private Colleges Come Knocking, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11.12.04, by Piper Fogg; As those institutions get richer, public universities struggle to keep their professors.
From the issue dated November 12, 2004
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i12/12a02001.htm
At a black-tie gala this fall, New York University kicked off a $2.5-billion
fund-raising campaign and a major effort to hire new faculty members.
To celebrate, Billy Joel, whose daughter is a freshman at NYU, performed for
400 donors, trustees, and other VIP's at Cipriani 42nd Street, an exclusive
restaurant in Manhattan. Their generosity had already enabled the university to
meet its goal of $200-million to finance 125 new faculty positions in the arts
and sciences over the next five years.
Even as NYU was feting donors and courting new ones, officials in the Oregon
University System were dropping a proposal to create a $500,000 "fighting fund"
to retain top faculty members; the cash-strapped state legislature had
indicated it would reject it.
Like administrators at many public universities these days, Oregon's
officials fear they can only do so much to retain their best faculty members
when rich private universities come knocking.
Warding off private institutions has always been a problem for state
universities. But it has become particularly acute as the financial disparity
between the two types has deepened in recent years. At doctoral institutions
across the country, full professors at private institutions earned $122,158
while their peers at public colleges made 77 percent of that, or $94,606, last
year, according to the American Association of University Professors. Five
years ago full professors at private institutions made $98,606 and their peers
at public institutions made 80 percent of that, or $79,284.
As that gap has increased, private colleges such as the University of
Southern California and Brown and New York Universities have embarked on
multiyear, multimillion-dollar campaigns to hire hundreds of new professors.
Meanwhile, public institutions are struggling to keep theirs. For example,
the number of faculty members at the University of Arizona who received outside
offers climbed 61 percent between 2000 and 2003, and the number of faculty
losses there increased steadily in that time.
Some public institutions are taking steps to stem the tide. The University
of Iowa recently secured a $250,000 donation to help ward off faculty poaching.
The University of Arizona persuaded the state legislature this year to give it
$4-million for the same reason. And the University of California at Los Angeles
has taken an even more definitive step: a $250-million fund-raising effort to
attract and retain faculty members and graduate students.
But for many universities, including those in the Oregon system, there is
little that can be done about the widening divide.
"It's a real problem," says Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell
Higher Education Research Institute. The divide, he says, has affected the
quality of undergraduate education and research at public universities.
Institutions that have long-term success with fund raising -- public or private
-- will be in better shape. Those that do not, he says, will have to compensate
by being strategic and creative. Mr. Ehrenberg says they will also "have to
make hard decisions about who is really important."
Jumping Ship
Jennifer Edson Escalas could be the poster woman for professors who choose
to leave public colleges for private ones. As an assistant professor of
marketing at the University of Arizona, Ms. Escalas worked last year on a
clunky desktop computer made in 1996. It kept crashing, but her department did
not have the money to buy a new one. She remembers long stretches of time when
the department had no working photocopier.
"We were all fighting over a small piece of the pie," says Ms. Escalas, who
received only $3,000 a year from the university to do her research. Even with
that, it was hard to attend more than two conferences a year. Because she had
already run through her budget, she had to apply this past spring for a
university travel grant to finance a trip to Murcia, Spain, where she was to
moderate a panel discussion at a European marketing conference. But the
university denied her request.
After paying her own way for a cheap flight and finding a roommate in Spain,
the professor found she could not afford the $500 registration fee for the
conference. She had to beg the director to sneak her in. "Those things, after a
while, start to wear you down," says Ms. Escalas.
But they made her decision easy when Vanderbilt University's business school
offered her a job that more than doubled her salary and included a
$13,000-a-year research budget.
"I keep getting in trouble for doing things myself," says Ms. Escalas of her
new life at Vanderbilt, where she shares an administrative assistant with three
other professors. At Arizona the 13-member marketing department shared one. She
says that at Vanderbilt, members of the support staff compile her course
packets, order copies of journals for her, and link articles to her Web site.
Not having to think about those things, she says, will help her be more
productive. And having enough research money will allow her to attend numerous
conferences and interact more with her peers.
Arizona's provost, George H. Davis, says retaining faculty is the
university's top priority. In 2003 the university lost 60 faculty members to
other institutions, 11 more than in the previous year. In addition to Ms.
Escalas, Arizona lost stars such as Daniel C. Lieber, a professor of toxicology
in the College of Pharmacy who brought in more than $5-million in research
grants over the past three years. He too went to Vanderbilt, which offered him
more resources. In 2001 Vernon L. Smith, an economist, also left Arizona, in
part because his research was not getting enough financial support from the
university. He went to George Mason University, which is public, and less than
a year later won a Nobel Prize for his work -- much of which he did while at
Tucson.
In each of the last three years, Mr. Davis says, the university allocated
between $400,000 and $500,000 for faculty retention. But with recent deep cuts
in the university's budget, faculty salaries have still not kept pace with
their competitors. "That has exacerbated the challenge of hanging on to
outstanding faculty members," says Mr. Davis. Deans have had to cannibalize
vacant faculty jobs to use those dollars to augment salaries, he says.
Last year the university asked state lawmakers for $16-million to spend on
faculty retention. They told the legislature that in the cases for which they
had data, outside institutions offered salaries in 2003 that on average were 34
percent higher than what the Arizona professors were making. Arizona made
counteroffers that averaged 21 percent more than what the professors were
already earning. The university received $4-million in this year's budget,
which Mr. Davis says will be a help in trying to close that gap.
Unequal Results
But boosting some faculty members' salaries and not others can substantially
throw off faculty salary scales. It can compound the already large disparity,
for example, between what professors in the humanities are paid compared with
pay in the sciences, medicine, and business, where outside offers are far
higher. It can also create inequalities within departments.
That is one of the reasons that the idea of a "fighting fund" failed to gain
traction both in the state legislature and among professors in the Oregon
University System. Many professors there argue that increasing the salaries of
the top 10 percent of the faculty, which they say would be the practical
outcome of such a fund, would unfairly leave the other 90 percent without
increases.
By singling out some but not others, says Peter B. Gilkey, a professor at
the University of Oregon who is chairman of the systemwide faculty senate, "you
do damage morale."
James Earl, a former president of the University of Oregon Senate and the
faculty representative to the university's lobbying group, says that
legislators made it clear that they did not want to give raises to select
faculty members when the salaries of all other state employees are subject to a
two-year salary freeze through 2005. "They considered it an end run around the
pay freeze," says Mr. Earl.
But system officials are hoping that when the legislature does meet early
next year it will authorize spending on faculty retention. In their budget
proposal for 2005-7, the Oregon State Board of Higher Education requested
$32.8-million to be spread across the seven-college system.
At the University of Oregon last year, of the 25 professors who received
outside offers, the university was able to retain 10. They lost nine and are
still uncertain about whether the other six will stay or go. Administrators and
department heads there argue that they need more resources if they want to
compete, for example, with the top public colleges and private institutions.
"They can make salary offers that are way out of line with anything we can
match," says John T. Moseley, Oregon's provost. "It does create a real inequity
and dichotomy." Like other public institutions, they too have turned to private
fund raising to fill in the gaps.
As part of their current capital campaign, they are trying to raise
$100-million to endow some 30 new faculty chairs, which would double the number
of chairs. They also rely on other resources. "We try to offer a good
environment, a good lifestyle," says Mr. Moseley. That includes the small city
of Eugene, an impressive arts scene, a good football team, and nice place to
raise a family, he says. That said, there is only so much they can do to keep a
professor, acknowledges Mr. Moseley: "We win some, and we lose some."
More Research Money
Albert Carnesale, UCLA's chancellor, says a highly ranked public research
university expects to lose some faculty members. "That should bring you pride,"
he says. But that pride can turn to dismay when large numbers of professors are
lost to private universities.
In 2001-2, 56 UCLA faculty members received outside offers. That number
jumped 20 percent the next year, to 70 professors. In both years they were able
to retain about 70 percent of those professors.
One department that has seen significant departures is political science,
which has lost three professors in the last five years to Stanford University,
and another to Harvard University. Kenneth A. Schultz, an associate professor
in the department who defected to Stanford, says that while salary issues did
not motivate his decision to leave last year -- UCLA matched Stanford's salary
offer as well as another offer from Yale University -- the larger issue of
long-term financial security did.
The concern he had about UCLA, says Mr. Schultz, was that "as a public
institution, it's very susceptible to the ups and downs of the economy. There's
questions about the commitment of the state to fully fund it." The standard
package for graduate students there, for example, includes one year of
fellowship followed by three years of teaching assistantships and one more year
of fellowship. For the rest of their time there, UCLA graduate students have to
find other ways to support themselves.
Worrying about making ends meet, says Mr. Schultz, takes time and energy
away from their research work with faculty members. "It certainly affects the
overall quality of the intellectual life there." It also means that large
lecture classes have fewer TA's, since the department can only support so many.
Consequently, he says, professors at UCLA have more papers to grade: "It's very
unattractive."
At Stanford, graduate students don't have to teach as much, and they receive
more financial support. That allows them not only to focus more on their own
work, says Mr. Schultz, but improves life for everyone in the department.
Michael F. Lofchie, chairman of the political-science department at UCLA,
says the department has always been identified as a leading department, and
that makes it particularly vulnerable "in an age of budget austerity." But, he
adds, while the situation is serious, it is not alarming. Poaching, he notes,
is something that happens all the time. He also says that conditions regarding
graduate students have recently improved. Using dollars generated in their
summer teaching program, the department was able to beef up graduate-student
packages from $15,000 to $20,000, which helped to increase their yield this
fall from an average of about 22 incoming students to 37.
Another professor who left UCLA recently for Stanford, Gi-Wook Shin, an
associate professor of sociology, departed because Stanford offered him the
resources to start a Korean-studies center. The Center for Korean Studies,
which he directed at UCLA, "had almost no money," he says. "You have to write
several pages of proposals just to get funding even to cover your phone." The
chairman of the sociology department, David Lopez, declined to comment on Mr.
Shin's departure.
At Stanford, Mr. Shin has already been able to help raise $6-million for his
new center. It is harder to raise money at a public institution, he says, where
the alumni donor base isn't as strong. A private institution like Stanford can
offer more perks to donors, he says, such as admitting their children as
students. And since he is a faculty member, Stanford will subsidize half the
Stanford tuition for Mr. Shin's own children, who are 7, 10, and 13.
To help remedy the situation, UCLA has created one of the most ambitious
campaigns to raise outside dollars to keep its best faculty members. One of the
goals of its $250-million fund-raising effort is to raise $100-million to
finance 100 new endowed chairs to help recruit and retain professors on the
campus. Officials also plan to raise $150-million for undergraduate and
graduate fellowships and scholarships in its liberal-arts college and
professional schools.
Some professors applaud the campaign, but others are taking a wait-and-see
attitude. "I'm not counting my chickens yet," says Roger Waldinger, who says he
was relieved to step down last year as chairman of the sociology department. He
says that with no cost-of-living increases for last four years, it has been and
will continue to be hard to hang on to people. "There's a long way to go," he
says. "We have to deal with the current crisis while that little nest egg
grows."
He complains that the administration should be more aggressive about trying
to keep people. The main question, he says, is will UCLA continue to be a
first-rate institution? "If we continue on the current trajectory," he says,
"the answer is no."
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