Merit bonuses

[Kron3007]

But the larger point would be most of the time there's nothing in the adjunct world that incentivizes anything other than doing basically acceptable work and staying out of trouble.

Can you give some examples of incentives which could be applied that would be appropriate? (Since they would apply to me, I'd certainly be interested in viable options.)

A bonus for publishing a book, especially one that provides something to the field that was missing. But really, promotion and ranking make more sense, because if you've gone to the trouble to write a really good book, then it's a transformational experience. You have more substance, then, and from then on.

Why would a university give a bonus to someone being paid to teach for writing a book?  This is not part of the job, so giving a bonus for that seems quite odd.  It would make more sense to me to have a teaching award with a cash bonus for excelling at the job they hired you to do.

Of course, the real problem is using part time (adjunct) positions to fill permanent needs.  This is akin to some stores hiring mostly part timers to avoid paying them benefits etc.  Personally, I think this needs to be dealt with through faculty unions to reduce reliance on adjuncts rather than unionizing as adjuncts  and thereby legitimizing this practice.  My collective agreement has sections like this and we do not have a lot of adjuncts here, which seems like the better solution.

[mahagonny]

Why would a university give a bonus to someone being paid to teach for writing a book?  This is not part of the job, so giving a bonus for that seems quite odd.  It would make more sense to me to have a teaching award with a cash bonus for excelling at the job they hired you to do.

OK, let's do that instead. I'm handy at both. But as for why writing a book warrants a bonus? Because the department now has the opportunity to use the professor as more of an attraction. Like, we don't just check the box 'yes' we do teach sculpture. We've got professor Art Sterling, who's one of the bad boys on the scene.

Of course, the real problem is using part time (adjunct) positions to fill permanent needs.  This is akin to some stores hiring mostly part timers to avoid paying them benefits etc.  Personally, I think this needs to be dealt with through faculty unions to reduce reliance on adjuncts rather than unionizing as adjuncts  and thereby legitimizing this practice.  My collective agreement has sections like this and we do not have a lot of adjuncts here, which seems like the better solution.

You still have adjuncts in your department? That's gross. It's the wrong way to staff yourselves up. Where are your standards? Get rid of the remaining ones. Bring it up at the next meeting. Your colleagues will love you for it.

[dr_codex]

My school has a promotion system for adjuncts, and after a few years you can get quasi tenure. What that means is that though you won't get all of the benefits of a tenured professor, you do not have to go through the contract renewal process again. You have the job so long as the need exists for the position, and in some cases, we'd probably even keep you if the need in your program vanished, so long as we could use you in another area.

Wow. I take it these procedures are explained in writing somewhere, like a faculty handbook or union contract? This amazes me.

They procedures may be more common than you think. We have something similar for full-time, non-TT faculty. Admittedly, not all who would be considered "adjunct faculty" would fall into this group (part-time faculty do not), but it is something. Our p/t faculty are eligible for full benefits if they teach at least 2 courses.

A few jobs back, the part-time faculty union was very strong. After you taught a course a couple of times, you had the right of first refusal any time it was listed. In effect, what Ruralguy describes, without the formal title change.

I think there is a lot more variability in adjunct labor than is usually discussed.

To the original topic, one of the issues with our merit raise (not bonus) system is that nothing would be added on base to part-time contract faculty. As a result, there was a strong disincentive to award it to them, since it would be a one-time benefit rather than a career boost. This was addressed in the alternate bonus system -- indeed, it worked out a lot better for some adjunct pools -- but I don't know how it will be addressed in our newest system.

[mahagonny]

My school has a promotion system for adjuncts, and after a few years you can get quasi tenure. What that means is that though you won't get all of the benefits of a tenured professor, you do not have to go through the contract renewal process again. You have the job so long as the need exists for the position, and in some cases, we'd probably even keep you if the need in your program vanished, so long as we could use you in another area.

Wow. I take it these procedures are explained in writing somewhere, like a faculty handbook or union contract? This amazes me.

They procedures may be more common than you think.

We don't know what Ruralguy is talking about yet. A policy that isn't in writing that is presented to the employee isn't a policy.  It could even be just somebody saying 'we hire the same people again and again -- sure!' He may be talking about 'adjuncts' who already have a full time position! Thanks for reminding me.

They procedures may be more common than you think. We have something similar for full-time, non-TT faculty. Admittedly, not all who would be considered "adjunct faculty" would fall into this group (part-time faculty do not), but it is something.

[apl68]

Honest question: How can "exemplary" teaching be reliably measured? This has been discussed here and elsewhere for ages and I have never yet seen any consensus on how it could be done.

If someone could come up with an evidence-based way to fairly and consistently evaluate teaching quality they could revolutionize education.

And that is why those whose jobs deal mainly with bringing in money will always have the advantage in terms of asking for more compensation.  How much money one brings in is a basically simple, crude numerical measure of performance--you bring in lots of money, you can demand to be allowed to keep some of it, or else threaten to take those coveted money-bringing skills elsewhere.
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When you're somebody whose contributions and value aren't so easy to measure, it can be frustrating to see so much of the rewards going to those who have the advantage of easily understandable numbers.  It helps that most of us have learned to value rewards that aren't all about numbers.  But that can be hard to do if you become so undervalued you have trouble making ends meet.

So, some jobs have simple "performance measures". Others don't. This leads to 3 possibilities:

• Assign merit everywhere, even if that means using controversial or imperfect measures for some.
• Give no merit anywhere, even though that will lead to losses of very good people in certain areas.
• Assign merit in areas where simple metrics are available, and not in other places.

Which of these is preferable?

A reasonable question to which I have no easy answer.  But not, I think, the wider issue that makes this an emotive topic for some.  An institution's money-bringers--whether they recruit more paying students, or attract more big donors, or whatever--do an important job in supporting the institution.  As polly points out, it's not unreasonable for the institution to show some generosity in compensating them when they're successful.

But unless we're talking about a for-profit school, fundraising is only supposed to be a means to an end.  The primary mission of the school is education, right?  So why, at so many schools, are so many of the ones doing the teaching--performing that primary mission--so poorly paid?  Why have so many seen their already modest compensation decline in real terms over the years?  Why is it that in many departments the only way for them to get anything is to fight over scraps--which is what some of these merit bonus systems sound like they amount to?  No wonder people facing situations like this get mad when they hear about certain privileged sorts in the support roles being treated so much more generously.  The people performing the basic essential task feel devalued, and often with reason.

[clean]

The primary mission of the school is education, right?

I wonder!
Research seems to be most valued where I am now (a growing, regional state university with about 12500 students, aiming for 20K, and aiming to increase our Carnegie rating ).

Perhaps it is that education is just the 'loss leader'.  Is it even why students attend?  Are there other, more important (to students) reasons? 
Im reminded of a phrase I heard from students while in PhD school.  "You can always retake a class, you can not retake a party!"

So perhaps administrations reward those activities that 1.  Reward other administrators  (who became administrators not because of talent or skill, but because they realize that it was the only way to increase their pay), 2. reward those that bring fame and students to the campus (like coaches) 3.  those that can attract research dollars to programs from grants and contracts.

As everyone is supposed to be a top teacher/educator, (that I what I hear at graduation ceremonies) then there is no way to differentiate the masses (if everyone made 100%, who is the top?) so no need or ability to reward 'the best'. 

there is a phrase that has floated around for some time that goes something like, "the fights in academe are so bitter because the stakes are so low (or there is so little to fight over)."  Perhaps administrators would rather just provide crumbs to the masses and pay bonuses for whatever can be defended as outstanding and that only a very few could qualify.  (Alternatively, there are crumbs to the masses because that is all that is left after awarding bonuses to other administrators, coaches, and assorted achievers. 

[marshwiggle]

An institution's money-bringers--whether they recruit more paying students, or attract more big donors, or whatever--do an important job in supporting the institution.  As polly points out, it's not unreasonable for the institution to show some generosity in compensating them when they're successful.

But unless we're talking about a for-profit school, fundraising is only supposed to be a means to an end.  The primary mission of the school is education, right?  So why, at so many schools, are so many of the ones doing the teaching--performing that primary mission--so poorly paid? 

Well, also, as polly points out, the fact that it's hard to point to real outcome differences for the institution based on the quality of teaching means that there's less motivation to try to measure and/or reward it.

As well, in my opinion, faculty bring some of this on themselves by constantly fighting any attempt to actually measure teaching quality. Student evaluations are a perenial favourite for critique, (and of course there are some valid arguments to be made), and peer-based evaluations are suspect due to possibilities of nepotism, etc. The point I want to make is that the choice by faculty to discourage any type of evaluation of teaching quality encourages institutions to ignore the issue entirely.

Personally, I'd be wiling to have something like 5% of my salary depend on some sort of performance measure, even a flawed one, to support the idea that quality actually matters.

[clean]

Personally, I'd be wiling to have something like 5% of my salary depend on some sort of performance measure, even a flawed one, to support the idea that quality actually matters.

With the idea that "quantity has a quality all its own", I think that my university is moving in that direction.  To even qualify for the minimal (less than inflation) Merit Raise, a minimum quantity of publications are required.  Publications will qualify you for the 'bonus' that I mentioned before.  The more you publish and the greater the 'quality' of the journals, the more your 'bonus'.

[mahagonny]

Unless I am miss my guess, admins who are responsible for raising money are supposed to, ahem,raise money.  Tell me again why doing their jobs renders them deserving of bonus compensation?

There's doing the job and then there's excelling at the job.

And then there's making a hash of the job, alienating people, being way off in your financial forecasting, and pulling in a juicy salary anyway.
(I could google around for examples, but I just bet you believe me already.)

An institution's money-bringers--whether they recruit more paying students, or attract more big donors, or whatever--do an important job in supporting the institution.  As polly points out, it's not unreasonable for the institution to show some generosity in compensating them when they're successful.

If you decide it's necessary or a forgone conclusion, it really doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not. You might as well then say it's reasonable, so you'll get a little piece of the action yourself.

[Ruralguy]

Sorry to go back a bit, bit I meant what I said about adjuncts with quasi-tenure at my school.
Its part of our handbook. Its a combination of time an quality. After a decade, assuming you survive that long as an adjunct and have met a minimum amount of student credit hours taught, you can go up for review to be consider for one of these senior adjunct positions. If you get this, you more or less get to stay unless there are extreme financial issues. We have about 20 total adjuncts at any given time, and about a third fall into this category, but we really only add a new person to the category every few years. Practically speaking, its the sort of thing that goes to tenured faculty spouses who aren't going anywhere.

[Kron3007]

Why would a university give a bonus to someone being paid to teach for writing a book?  This is not part of the job, so giving a bonus for that seems quite odd.  It would make more sense to me to have a teaching award with a cash bonus for excelling at the job they hired you to do.

OK, let's do that instead. I'm handy at both. But as for why writing a book warrants a bonus? Because the department now has the opportunity to use the professor as more of an attraction. Like, we don't just check the box 'yes' we do teach sculpture. We've got professor Art Sterling, who's one of the bad boys on the scene.

Of course, the real problem is using part time (adjunct) positions to fill permanent needs.  This is akin to some stores hiring mostly part timers to avoid paying them benefits etc.  Personally, I think this needs to be dealt with through faculty unions to reduce reliance on adjuncts rather than unionizing as adjuncts  and thereby legitimizing this practice.  My collective agreement has sections like this and we do not have a lot of adjuncts here, which seems like the better solution.

You still have adjuncts in your department? That's gross. It's the wrong way to staff yourselves up. Where are your standards? Get rid of the remaining ones. Bring it up at the next meeting. Your colleagues will love you for it.

You complain about how adjuncts are treated but defend the reliance on them? I don't like seeing people getting strung along for low pay without job security, this dosnt mean I think less of people doing the job.  If adepartment routinely needs people to teach the same course year after year, it should be filled with a perminent employee that has job security and other perks that come with it

We really don't have a regular adjunct pool were I am, we only hire sessionals when we have a course that needs to be covered and no one takes it as overload.  It seems to me that this was the intent of adjunct, but it has been exploited

This is similar to postdocs and soft money research staff, but where I am out labour laws give them better protection (severance packages etc.).

[mahagonny]

Why would a university give a bonus to someone being paid to teach for writing a book?  This is not part of the job, so giving a bonus for that seems quite odd.  It would make more sense to me to have a teaching award with a cash bonus for excelling at the job they hired you to do.

OK, let's do that instead. I'm handy at both. But as for why writing a book warrants a bonus? Because the department now has the opportunity to use the professor as more of an attraction. Like, we don't just check the box 'yes' we do teach sculpture. We've got professor Art Sterling, who's one of the bad boys on the scene.

Of course, the real problem is using part time (adjunct) positions to fill permanent needs.  This is akin to some stores hiring mostly part timers to avoid paying them benefits etc.  Personally, I think this needs to be dealt with through faculty unions to reduce reliance on adjuncts rather than unionizing as adjuncts  and thereby legitimizing this practice.  My collective agreement has sections like this and we do not have a lot of adjuncts here, which seems like the better solution.

You still have adjuncts in your department? That's gross. It's the wrong way to staff yourselves up. Where are your standards? Get rid of the remaining ones. Bring it up at the next meeting. Your colleagues will love you for it.

You complain about how adjuncts are treated but defend the reliance on them? I don't like seeing people getting strung along for low pay without job security, this dosnt mean I think less of people doing the job.  If adepartment routinely needs people to teach the same course year after year, it should be filled with a perminent employee that has job security and other perks that come with it

We really don't have a regular adjunct pool were I am, we only hire sessionals when we have a course that needs to be covered and no one takes it as overload.  It seems to me that this was the intent of adjunct, but it has been exploited

This is similar to postdocs and soft money research staff, but where I am out labour laws give them better protection (severance packages etc.).

Why don't they take them as overload? Suggest it seriously at the next meeting. I don't mean sigh and say 'wouldn't it be nice if everyone had good jobs with benefits.' I mean seriously get it done. Here's what you'll find out: the tenured people are going to get pissed off at you, because they want to be able to use adjuncts when it suits their material and career interests.
This business of the tenure track imagining it is not complicit is so arrogant it
s nauseating.

[Kron3007]

As I said, we don't end up using many adjuncts, most courses get covered by faculty, so me saying this would be weird.

[mahagonny]

I don't have issue with them hiring sessionals for the odd course, that is far different than constant , long term, use of adjuncts.  That being said, I have taught courses on overload and the chair was very greatfull.  Every time we hire a sessional we have to go through an interview process, so no one prefers this over a full time employee teaching it.

I realise you must have formed this opinion based on your experience, but that does not make it universally true.

If your sessionals want to unionize, just shut up about it, if you can't support them. It's none of your business.

I guess you're not in the USA. Realise = realize.

[Kron3007]

I don't have issue with them hiring sessionals for the odd course, that is far different than constant , long term, use of adjuncts.  That being said, I have taught courses on overload and the chair was very greatfull.  Every time we hire a sessional we have to go through an interview process, so no one prefers this over a full time employee teaching it.

I realise you must have formed this opinion based on your experience, but that does not make it universally true.

If your sessionals want to unionize, just shut up about it, if you can't support them. It's none of your business.

I guess you're not in the USA. Realise = realize.

No, I'm not in the USA and yet still have opinions. 

I'm not saying adjuncts shouldn't try to unionize, and I think ours are, but I don't think it actually addresses the real problem in places where it is a significant issue (it is growing here, we actively fight it).