Job expectations for faculty living far, far away

[history_grrrl]

I think there's a lot of stuff that can be done remotely — meetings especially — and making people show up in person just to make a point is counter-productive and bad for morale. Frankly, there's so many ways I go above and beyond for this job that I get grouchy when the administration tries to insist on extra effort, like showing up for unnecessary in-person meetings, just to "keep us from feeling entitled."

Interestingly, in the cases I'm aware of, the faculty members do very little: they teach far fewer students because they have much higher drop/withdraw rates than others, and they do very little service in the department or at the university level - or do such a poor job that they're rewarded for bad behavior by not getting assigned or asked.

This situation seems to be breeding not only resentment among locals and other "old reliable" types who have much bigger classes and tend go above and beyond but also attempts by the resentful to get perks for themselves ("If Dr. X doesn't show up to campus to fulfill blah-blah service responsibility, why should I?").

[Hibush]

For people from outside Canada, there's a big government workers' strike right now, and one of the big things the union is pushing for is remote work to be written into the collective agreement. It's pretty hard to see any way that could be done, given that there will always be a portion of jobs that can't be done remotely.

Wouldn't the criteria for allowing remote work approval be an important part of a collective agreement, so that the opportunity is available similarly for all rather than having a bunch of ad hoc deals that cause resentment?

The big danger is in the default expectation; if the onus is on the employee to establish that they can do their job remotely, then that's entirely different than if the onus is on the manager to establish why the job can't be done remotely. The latter case would potentially open Pandora's box.

Exactly. That's why reasonable guidelines in the contract helps reduce local pressure on managers to make bad agreements. Obviously a blanket provision that anyone can teach remotely would be terrible and should be opposed by labor and management alike. 

[Caracal]

I think there's a lot of stuff that can be done remotely — meetings especially — and making people show up in person just to make a point is counter-productive and bad for morale. Frankly, there's so many ways I go above and beyond for this job that I get grouchy when the administration tries to insist on extra effort, like showing up for unnecessary in-person meetings, just to "keep us from feeling entitled."

Interestingly, in the cases I'm aware of, the faculty members do very little: they teach far fewer students because they have much higher drop/withdraw rates than others, and they do very little service in the department or at the university level - or do such a poor job that they're rewarded for bad behavior by not getting assigned or asked.

This situation seems to be breeding not only resentment among locals and other "old reliable" types who have much bigger classes and tend go above and beyond but also attempts by the resentful to get perks for themselves ("If Dr. X doesn't show up to campus to fulfill blah-blah service responsibility, why should I?").

You can't just unilaterally change the terms of your employment, even if you're a tenured professor. If these faculty members are teaching all their classes remotely, it's because the chair is agreeing to schedule remote classes for them. Unless there's some sort of medical accommodation at play, the chair could just put them down for in person classes and they would either have to show up or quit.

This seems like a governance issue for departments and the school. Do they want to offer online classes? How many? Which classes? Is it ok to have faculty member who never teach in person classes? If you answered those questions, then they could at least have a framework to deal with these questions. As it is, it sounds like faculty are just being allowed to teach online if they want to, without any regard for what works for the department and the students. In the middle of the pandemic that kind of approach made some sense, but it isn't sustainable in the long term.

It's easy to blame faculty members who want to keep their jobs and never come anywhere near campus, but this is being enabled by everyone else.

[dismalist]

I think there's a lot of stuff that can be done remotely — meetings especially — and making people show up in person just to make a point is counter-productive and bad for morale. Frankly, there's so many ways I go above and beyond for this job that I get grouchy when the administration tries to insist on extra effort, like showing up for unnecessary in-person meetings, just to "keep us from feeling entitled."

Interestingly, in the cases I'm aware of, the faculty members do very little: they teach far fewer students because they have much higher drop/withdraw rates than others, and they do very little service in the department or at the university level - or do such a poor job that they're rewarded for bad behavior by not getting assigned or asked.

This situation seems to be breeding not only resentment among locals and other "old reliable" types who have much bigger classes and tend go above and beyond but also attempts by the resentful to get perks for themselves ("If Dr. X doesn't show up to campus to fulfill blah-blah service responsibility, why should I?").

You can't just unilaterally change the terms of your employment, even if you're a tenured professor. If these faculty members are teaching all their classes remotely, it's because the chair is agreeing to schedule remote classes for them. Unless there's some sort of medical accommodation at play, the chair could just put them down for in person classes and they would either have to show up or quit.

This seems like a governance issue for departments and the school. Do they want to offer online classes? How many? Which classes? Is it ok to have faculty member who never teach in person classes? If you answered those questions, then they could at least have a framework to deal with these questions. As it is, it sounds like faculty are just being allowed to teach online if they want to, without any regard for what works for the department and the students. In the middle of the pandemic that kind of approach made some sense, but it isn't sustainable in the long term.

It's easy to blame faculty members who want to keep their jobs and never come anywhere near campus, but this is being enabled by everyone else.

Simple solution: Reduce the wages of remote workers! :-)

[Ruralguy]

Certainly the implications of several big wig CEO's is that they will reduce their wages (of remote workers) to more or less zero, i.e., fire them.

[kaysixteen]

Hmmm... if the bossman (i.e., library director-- I agree with apl, btw) or a tenured prof, could do this, what would be the rationale for making the adjuncts, reference librarians, and secretaries show up?

[Hegemony]

A certain amount of work has to be done in person. It makes sense to be sure to share that equitably.

I knew someone whose wife got a plum job 2000 miles away. He maintained an apartment in town, but taught remotely most semesters, with the okay of the administration — I don't think they even realized he was usually resident elsewhere. He flew in for every in-person requirement. If a PhD student had an in-person defense, he flew in for it. If he had to watch a student performance, he flew in for it. You really would not have known he was primarily living elsewhere. I think that's the ethical way to do it. It also relies on the administration not making silly requirements about in-person committee meetings or the like, when remote ones would suit everyone much better.

We used to have mandatory meetings at 7:30 in the morning, ye gads. No one is insisting we go back to the in-person version of those. Even the dean zooms in from home.

[kaysixteen]

What type of college has mandatory fac meetings (of any type) at 7:30am?

[Hegemony]

State R1.

[Caracal]

Simple solution: Reduce the wages of remote workers! :-)

I can't see why that would need to be a solution. You actually can't just announce that you're going to be teaching remote classes forever anymore than you can announce that you will be teaching only from 11-3 on TR. You can request either of those things, but whether they can be granted should depend on whether they can fit with the rest of the schedule and the needs of the department.

If the department decides that there are advantages to teaching remote classes, and there's someone who is good at teaching remotely and it works in the schedule to have them do it, and they are willing to come back to campus to meet any responsibilities, then there's no problem. Why would you want to reduce wages of people doing an effective job? If the department decides it doesn't make sense to offer some classes remotely, you can tell people that and schedule them for in person classes.

[lightning]

I only found out very recently that one of my colleagues was teaching a course that was meant to be taught face-to-face, over Zoom because they were actually still really living in the EU. And, they were getting away with it. They were getting away with it because 1) it was a small (<10) upper level/grad student class, 2) the content was not compromised because of the delivery format, 3) we don't really have tight rules about delivery formats and on-campus presence (yet), and 4) it's what the students really wanted because they, too, don't want to come to campus.

Under these conditions, I can see how and why they got away with it.


On a more general note,
If the 4 conditions above are met and your teaching can be outsourced to cheaper, qualified, and English-speaking teaching labor in India, without anyone giving a crap, your teaching will be outsourced to India.

[marshwiggle]

Simple solution: Reduce the wages of remote workers! :-)

I can't see why that would need to be a solution. You actually can't just announce that you're going to be teaching remote classes forever anymore than you can announce that you will be teaching only from 11-3 on TR. You can request either of those things, but whether they can be granted should depend on whether they can fit with the rest of the schedule and the needs of the department.

If the department decides that there are advantages to teaching remote classes, and there's someone who is good at teaching remotely and it works in the schedule to have them do it, and they are willing to come back to campus to meet any responsibilities, then there's no problem. Why would you want to reduce wages of people doing an effective job? If the department decides it doesn't make sense to offer some classes remotely, you can tell people that and schedule them for in person classes.

OK, don't do that. Give instructors a bonus for teaching in-person. Problem solved.

I only found out very recently that one of my colleagues was teaching a course that was meant to be taught face-to-face, over Zoom because they were actually still really living in the EU. And, they were getting away with it. They were getting away with it because 1) it was a small (<10) upper level/grad student class, 2) the content was not compromised because of the delivery format, 3) we don't really have tight rules about delivery formats and on-campus presence (yet), and 4) it's what the students really wanted because they, too, don't want to come to campus.

That's the one that's going to have the biggest impact in the long run.

Under these conditions, I can see how and why they got away with it.


On a more general note,
If the 4 conditions above are met and your teaching can be outsourced to cheaper, qualified, and English-speaking teaching labor in India, without anyone giving a crap, your teaching will be outsourced to India.

I've seen articles about this for all fully remote jobs. As they say, be careful what you wish for.

[ciao_yall]

It's been a bit of a slow whiplash here in CA.

First, there was a huge push to put classes online. "If we have classes online, we can attract paying students from all over the world!" Never mind that you would have to advertise all over the world to attract those students but hey...

Then, the pandemic hit and we went 100% online. Dropout and failure rates soared.

As we started returning to face to face, the remaining students and faculty loved being online and insisted they would drop out, or needed health accommodations to be 100% remote. Yet, we were not attracting new students or retaining them beyond the initial online enrollment... and quick drop once they realize that "online" doesn't mean "do whatever you want whenever it's convenient at half-attention and get an A."

Colleges that have a strong face-to-face component seem to be recovering their enrollment faster than those that remain online. The high school graduates are sick of being home and want to be around their friends. The college campus is an ecosystem of jobs and support services that give students multiple reasons to show up to class because they are on campus anyway.

Personally, I hate Zoom meetings. I'd rather be on campus and see real people and run into them at the coffee bar or at lunch.

In my city, while downtown is dead, the neighborhood cafes and restaurants are packed with people working at home who like having other humans and activity around them while they work.

[darkstarrynight]

Almost every program in our department has moved online in recent years, but we overhauled the curriculum in recent years for our in-person masters program since students complained they came here and were forced to take too many online courses (which cost more). So while I primarily teach online, I do teach one in-person class. Many people in our college teach completely online, but the only time someone taught the in-person class for me was when I was on sabbatical last year.

[Caracal]

As we started returning to face to face, the remaining students and faculty loved being online and insisted they would drop out, or needed health accommodations to be 100% remote. Yet, we were not attracting new students or retaining them beyond the initial online enrollment... and quick drop once they realize that "online" doesn't mean "do whatever you want whenever it's convenient at half-attention and get an A."

When I asked students about their experiences of online classes when we went back to mostly in person, the vast majority of them hated being online and were thrilled to be back in the classroom. The same was true of most faculty I know too. Personally, I found online teaching to be incredibly demoralizing.