Daily Egyptian Politics Editor

Although SIUC’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution calling for a reduction in the ratio of students to tenured faculty last week, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost John Jackson says the University will not change its hiring practices.

The senate said that from 1987 to 1997 there was a 15.8-percent drop in tenured faculty, and that the number of non-tenure faculty had increased by 36.6 percent during that time.

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But the official University head count from Jackson’s office shows a 9-percent decrease in tenured or tenure-track faculty in the past 10 years (1988 to 1997) and an 18.8-percent increase in non-tenure faculty.

SIUC’s situation is not unique. A similar trend exists at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. Although UIUC has more students, more instructors, and different ratios of students to instructors, it has a 9.1-percent decrease in tenured or tenure-track faculty and an 17.1-percent increase in non-tenure faculty.

Jackson said the practice of hiring non-tenure faculty has been increasing because many tenured professors choose to do research and cannot teach a large number of class sections.

We have a large number of classes that we need to offer, especially within the core curriculum, Jackson said. We need to serve the needs and demands of the students.

Jackson said by hiring non-tenure, or term, instructors, the University can let tenured faculty continue with research while providing a large number of core class sections.

But A. J. Morey, director of the core curriculum, said increases in the number of non-tenure faculty may be detrimental to students’ education.

The term faculty are often wonderful teachers, but they are overworked, she said. We take advantage of our term instructors.

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Because term instructors constantly must prepare to seek employment at other institutions, Morey said, they often cannot give as much attention to their large numbers of class sections as a tenured faculty member can.

In addition, Morey said more of her time is devoted to orienting new term instructors than would be necessary if more faculty were tenured.

I am always having to reintroduce the core curriculum, she said. It is exhausting to reinvent the wheel so often.

Morey said more tenured-faculty involvement in teaching is needed.

We are not getting our mileage out of some of our faculty, she said. They ought to be involved in the core curriculum classrooms more often.