Here’s a follow up to my previous post about student-to-faculty ratios not being related to university finances. I recently asked an administrator if the ratio is a proxy for revenues and expenditures. I was told that the ratio is actually a measure of efficiency.
Continue reading “Efficiency isn’t necessary Efficient in HigherEd”Criticizing Student-to-Faculty Ratios
There are a lot of metrics or methods of measuring what we do in higher education. An important one for us professors is faculty full-time equivalent (FTE), which is a percentage calculation of a single faculty member’s teaching. In other words, an FTE of 1.0 represents a full-time professor. Two people hired half-time would also be 1.0. At my institution and system, it is primarily based on teaching load. In my case, teaching my full 4/4 load is represented as 1.0 in a spreadsheet. In that spreadsheet, there is also a tally of all faculty to get an overall number of faculty FTE, which is 428.61 for Fall 2019. This is also done for students and staff as well as using other formulas for measuring the notion of full-time.
Continue reading “Criticizing Student-to-Faculty Ratios”Overworked (the pandemic version)
Previously, I’ve written about my workload. As I begin to prepare for Fall 2020, I’ve been thinking about how I can design classes that will avoid the COVID chaos of Spring 2020.
Like everyone else, my time commitment to my classes increased dramatically once we went online due to the COVID-19 closures and quarantine in the spring. In addition to all the work needed to convert my face-to-face classes online, there were other issues. Rather than have a relatively set schedule for work, we moved into a 24/7 environment that has broken apart our already porous academic work and non-academic lives.
Continue reading “Overworked (the pandemic version)”Overworked? Analyzing my workload
So I teach a lot. I teach an average of 254 students per semester without the help of teaching assistants (at the time this was written). I’m sure there are other others who have to do the same. In this blog post, I’m going to take a look at staffing at my institution.