Using Sick Days and Vacation Days as a Full-Time Faculty Member

[coolswimmer800]

On my paycheck, I see I have accrued a good number of sick days and vacation days.

Dumb question since this is my first full-time job, especially as faculty:

1) Do FT faculty actually use sick days and vacation days? If yes, how? I am confused because we don't have a set schedule, and it's not like I can take a vacation day for the days I have lecture.

2) Another dumb question, I think I can let these days accrue, and it will only be problematic for me when it hits an extremely high number many years from now?

[writingprof]

I have an unlimited number of sick days and use them whenever I please.  When the mood strikes, I send an email to students cancelling class.  This system will continue until I retire, they fire me, or the university ceases to exist.  If the first, victory!  If the second, surely I will have a bit of warning first and a chance to mend my ways.  If the third, well, it probably wasn't my laziness that killed us.

Go and do likewise.

[Ruralguy]

Honestly, officially I have zero sick days when classes are in session and
every day when school isn't open I can do as I please (but no official vacation days at any other time).

Reality being what its though, if I'm sick, and I am teaching that day,
and don't feel I should expose students to my illness (and/or I just can't do anything at all) , I just cancel class and find a way for a colleague to fill in or absent that, for them to do compensating work. We're supposed to tell the Dean, but I don't think everybody does. I have done similar things if I needed to leave a day early for a vacation (though it doesn't happen very often).

[Caracal]

Academia has a weird schedule, but the basic principles are sort of like with any job. If you not being there isn't going to have any major effect on anyone else, it is probably fine to just take the occasional unplanned day off. If there is something important that day, or it is going to mess things up for other people you shouldn't usually do it. Since students are people, and class is an important thing, I wouldn't feel ok about just randomly cancelling class because I didn't feel like teaching that day.

If you're not feeling well, everyone can deal. And obviously there are other reasons to cancel a class. Honestly, I don't think I'd function well once I decided I could just cancel class when I wanted to. Seems like a dangerous road to go down...

[Vkw10]

On my paycheck, I see I have accrued a good number of sick days and vacation days.

Dumb question since this is my first full-time job, especially as faculty:

1) Do FT faculty actually use sick days and vacation days? If yes, how? I am confused because we don't have a set schedule, and it's not like I can take a vacation day for the days I have lecture.

2) Another dumb question, I think I can let these days accrue, and it will only be problematic for me when it hits an extremely high number many years from now?

Your campus may have a policy. FormerU expected faculty to use sick leave if cancelling class, missing a committee meeting, seeing doctor, or otherwise not working between 9-4 on M-F. Only 12-month faculty received vacation days. Pretty sure most faculty under-reported sick leave since there wasn't a way to monitor.

Some places limit accumulation. Some places pay out when you leave. CurrentU limits vacation accumulation, with excess converting to sick leave. They pay out accumulated vacation when you leave, but not accumulated sick leave.

HR will know rules on accumulation and payout.

[San Joaquin]

Information should, but may not, also appear in the faculty handbook.

[polly_mer]

My accumulated leave was very handy when I became administration and was on a more regular schedule 12 months.  I was paid out almost a month of vacation when I left that administrative position.

[fourhats]

We only get sick days if we're in administration. Our university no longer allows payout of unused vacation time at retirement, because it was costing millions.

If a faculty member gets sick, but not for long enough to request medical leave, they are expected to either make up the class in some way or have someone else cover for them. We can't just outright cancel a class just because we feel like it.

At some schools there are students who actually calculate what they are paying per class session and complain if a class is canceled, because they've paid for instruction they haven't received.

[Puget]

We don't have them-- we control our own schedules, and of course are often working at times we aren't getting paid to do so.

In writing you are supposed to tell your chair if you are canceling class, but in practice no one does this if it is just one class (and chairs would find it pretty weird if we did)-- we just make our own arrangements to either have a TA or colleague cover it or give them some alternative assignment.

[clean]

Do FT faculty actually use sick days and vacation days? If yes, how? I am confused because we don't have a set schedule, and it's not like I can take a vacation day for the days I have lecture.

2) Another dumb question, I think I can let these days accrue, and it will only be problematic for me when it hits an extremely high number many years from now?

There is an online form. We get them and there are rules governing their use.

I earn one sick day a month.  I use on or maybe 2  a year, on average.

For me, it is really a matter of CYA!  IF you miss a class AND Then something goes wrong (who knows what?)  then there will be questions.  The absolute best defense against the potential problems is to have the sick leave forms submitted. 


From a faculty grievance hearing I was serving on, a faculty member was charging their chair and dean with bad deeds.  The chair was imposing sanctions because the faculty member missed some 'mandatory meetings'.  The faculty member had claimed to be sick and had evidence, but HAD the FM submitted the forms on the day the FM missed (rather than weeks later), then the FM's case would have been much stronger as the admincritters would have been officially notified of the FMs illness and THEN IF the admincritter had committed these violations the FM would have had a much much stronger case. 

However, I can also say that I dont think that many use them as often as they should.   A coworker became an administrator at a sister university.  Two years after he left, I filed the sick leave requests and I got a call from him asking me what he should do.  My university still had him listed as my supervisor!!  I told him to deny them!  That would be the only way that the situation would be fixed.
Then our HR said that I had to resubmit the forms.  I ccd my chair and dean that I had already done MY job and that I was not going to redo work I had already done correctly because someone else had failed in their tasks.  I added that i would be paid the same whether they took off those hours or not, and I wasnt going to do it, but I would not object if they corrected the problem and reduced my sick leave hours.

I now have earned more than 6 months worth.

The BAD NEWS is, as I understand it, You can NEVER USE THEM!!  IF you are really sick, and needed to be out for six months, the university would pay you the max they pay (about 1 month) and then transfer you to long term disability!    (why does it matter?  It changes the budget you get paid from.

In the 'olden day's you could get up to 1/2 of the unused days upon retirement, but that has changed.  NOW if you leave, they ask you to donate your unused hours to the sick leave pool. 

Anyway, IF you have them, you likely have a set or rules that govern their use and I highly recommend that you become familiar with the rules that govern them.  Complete the forms when appropriate!

[lightning]

Even though I have them allocated to me, I have never used a sick day, vacation day, or personal day. Nobody else on the faculty uses them either.

If I can't make it, I just tell an admin assistant, and I don't show up. Or sometimes, in relatively rarer instances, I simply don't show up.

What I'm curious about is if I get a nice big payout, when I finally leave this friggin' place. At my previous job, I conducted myself in the same manner, and I was pleasantly surprised with an "I quit bonus" in my very last paycheck, from all my unused leave.

[sinenomine]

My paycheck shows the same kind of data because the payroll service has it automated, but the employee handbook explains the policy for faculty. Basically, we're expected to take vacations when classes are in break, and if we're ill enough to require more than two weeks of coverage, we should consult with HR. In the only instance I've seen of that, for a colleague who was hospitalized toward the end of a semester, their department colleagues stepped in to cover classes.

[polly_mer]

What I'm curious about is if I get a nice big payout, when I finally leave this friggin' place. At my previous job, I conducted myself in the same manner, and I was pleasantly surprised with an "I quit bonus" in my very last paycheck, from all my unused leave.

Check the employee handbook. 

Sick leave is almost never paid out: use it or lose it. 

Vacation may be paid out, but may also be subject to a limit on how much one can accumulate.  My current employer allows for accumulation only to the equivalent of what someone would earn over two years.  That became important during Covid as people hit limits and did not want to take vacation that would just be sitting around the house.

[clean]

Here, and where I was before, faculty do not earn vacation days.  Administrators can earn vacation.

A coworker stepped down from admin back to faculty with almost 3 weeks of vacation. At retirement those were paid out. There was a bit of a fight, though, as an administrator, he made much more, and the university was trying to pay based on the last salary.

As I indicated above, sick leave is not paid out and even IF one had accumulated a full year of it, you could not actually use it before you would be shifted to disability.

[dr_codex]

Here, and where I was before, faculty do not earn vacation days.  Administrators can earn vacation.

A coworker stepped down from admin back to faculty with almost 3 weeks of vacation. At retirement those were paid out. There was a bit of a fight, though, as an administrator, he made much more, and the university was trying to pay based on the last salary.

As I indicated above, sick leave is not paid out and even IF one had accumulated a full year of it, you could not actually use it before you would be shifted to disability.

Same here. Only 40 vacation days can be "banked". After that, use them or lose them. Part of the idea is to force people, and their supervisors, to ensure that actual time off is taken. The other part is to limit the payout when somebody leaves.

Faculty don't earn vacation days. Faculty also, therefore, cannot "donate" them, which staff can and do for people who have run out of sick days.

Faculty do bank sick days. The rules for claiming these changed a few years ago, for a variety of reasons. At one time, legend has it that one could exchange an excessive number of sick days for health coverage for life; I don't think that offer still exists, now that the ACA exists.