Page 305 - Crisis in Higher Education

Reshaping Faculty’s Role • 275

11. Visual learning: The videos, e-books, discussion sessions, and other
activities should use pictures, charts, and diagrams that use colors to
explain ideas and techniques.

This list of ideas is intended as a starting point to improve learning and
lower the cost of instruction. As faculty investigate courses in order to
improve productivity, they are likely to find many more ways.

12.6 UNIVERSITIES AND FACULTY UNIONS

Universities have unions that represent their employees, such as clerks, cam-
pus security, custodians, graduate assistants, and other groups, including
faculty. Although a broad discussion of unionization may be insightful, the
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focus is on faculty unions, which have grown significantly in recent years.
In 2011, about 21% of all universities had faculty unions with unionization
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at public universities being 35%. Two-year institutions are about twice as
likely to have faculty unions as institutions offering bachelor’s degrees. 23
People believe that unions are formed to increase pay and improve
working conditions, but research shows that unionization of full-time
faculty in public higher education has at best a modest impact on the
level of compensation. The impact tends to be on how salary increases
are distributed with unions favoring across-the-board increases to cope
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with inflation versus merit-based increases. In truth, faculty unions are a
reaction to a widening gap between administration and faculty. Unions
are often blamed for creating the problems in higher education, but union-
ization is symptomatic for the following reasons:

1. Assumption of power: University boards and administrators have
assumed power and limited faculty participation in key manage-
ment processes, such as strategic planning, and they have restricted
faculty input and authority with respect to resource allocation.
2. Accelerating administrative costs: As described in prior chapters, the
number of administrators has grown much faster than faculty posi-
tions and student enrollment. At the same time, administrative sala-
ries have grown much faster than faculty wages and inflation.

Unionization of graduate assistants, part-time faculty, and full-time
instructional faculty presents a workable set of issues that center on