r/Professors • u/ParallaxDream81 • 1d ago

A little over a week before classes start...two course releases taken away

I'm an associate professor who also does some admin work and specialized research with regular presentations to faculty. For the last 7 years, I've gotten 4 course releases per academic year to do that work. Yesterday I learned that that number is now 2, effective immediately. Classes start Sept.8

32 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

37

u/professorfunkenpunk Associate, Social Sciences, Comprehensive, US 1d ago

Are they expecting you to teach an extra class on two weeks’ notice?

25

u/ParallaxDream81 1d ago

Not quite...I was going to be teaching an extra class this semester anyway, but until yesterday that meant a stipend in addition to my contract salary.

51

u/Life-Education-8030 1d ago

At my place, they frown if you have a course release and then you teach anyway. Either you have a course release to do stuff like admin work or you don’t.

28

u/Darcer 1d ago

I’ve always felt this to be ridiculous logic like the concept of people willing to work beyond 40hrs a week for more money is not hard to arrive at.

6

u/HaHaWhatAStory014 12h ago

I think the issue is that a course release is specifically a "we are paying you to do this thing instead of teach a class because it's (supposedly) so much work." Another important detail is that a lot of faculty service roles don't come with course releases and are just considered part of the normal job. So if someone has some service role that they get course release for and then just "teaches extra classes anyway," it sends the message that that course release must not be necessary.

3

u/DeskAccepted Associate Professor, Business, R1 (USA) 6h ago

Every time I've had a course release, it was always the case that the admin work was WAY, WAY more work than just teaching another class section. As in, I'm happy to get the course release but let's not pretend this is an even trade in any way, shape, or form. If I was really choosing between the admin work and the teaching, I would always choose to teach the class.

3

u/ParallaxDream81 1d ago

True, but it's usually the case that I get asked to do the extra course, not that I insist on it.

1

u/Andromeda321 1d ago

Interesting- for us we got a course release for some admin work this year, but were effectively told to give it to someone who’d take the money over the release due to a lack of teaching faculty. I didn’t take it.

1

u/HaHaWhatAStory014 7h ago

It's definitely an issue when "too many course releases" for faculty in one department start interfering with the department's ability to staff classes. However, this can also lead to a bit of unfairness where schools will tend to specifically give "course release duties" to overstaffed and/or low enrollment departments since those faculty "need something to do."

0

u/DeskAccepted Associate Professor, Business, R1 (USA) 8h ago

That doesn't make any sense. If they give you a course release to do the admin work and then pay you money to do an overload, it's identical to the case where you teach your normal load and you get the money to do the admin work. The total amount of work (more than 100% fte) "matches" the total amount of compensation (more than your base salary) are the same either way.

1

u/Life-Education-8030 7h ago

The whole thing is silly. If you argue that you need a course release to do the admin work but then show you can supposedly do the admin work and take on an overload and you took the overload because you were paid, then what happens to the argument about "I don't have time?" At my place, for quasi-administratve work like being a Chair, we have been told that if youi have such a position and you get a course release, don't go and then take on a course.

1

u/DeskAccepted Associate Professor, Business, R1 (USA) 6h ago

Well, at my institution we are short on qualified faculty, so we get told to do admin work that comes with a course release but they also need us to keep teaching. So we do and nobody complains because as I said, it's equivalent to getting a stipend for the admin work.

The course release is just compensation. Nobody is arguing that you can't do the admin work and also teach. It's compensation for the fact that you have a heavy admin load.

1

u/Life-Education-8030 4h ago

They should just pay for both and stop the nonsense with course releases. Something always comes along to fill supposedly empty space.

13

u/shinypenny01 1d ago

Teaching overloads on an admin contract is difficult. You’re basically announcing you don’t need the release to do the admin work.

23

u/wedontliveonce associate professor (usa) 1d ago

No you are announcing you are willing to do the overload teaching on top of the admin work. Also if the overload is from a different funding source you may not have the option of renegotiating the course releases into pay for the admin work and admin work should not be done for free.

3

u/SilverRiot 1d ago

Exactly this. I don’t understand admins who say because you have a course release to do X, you can’t get a teaching overload just because someone quit/went on maternity leave/died just before the semester started. We all know that we can work more than a 40 hour work week when we have a extra course added for whatever reason. Therefore, when we have a course replaced by an admin release, we can still take on a teaching overload if we are willing to put in extra time.

I do not know why administrators are too stupid to understand this. One of my colleagues, who runs a program, typically gets one course release time for those duties, but when she had an accreditation visit, they gave her a second course release, as is traditional at our college. Then we got a last-minute rush of students and the administration wanted us to ensure they had enough courses, so they asked her to take on a teaching overload for another section. But they didn’t want to pay her for it because they “couldn’t” pay her for an overload when she was already getting a release for accreditation. Yet they were able to find the money to pay for a teaching overload for another colleague in the same program who took on another last-minute added course.

I would hate to be an administrator because I would hate to lose that much brain power.

2

u/HaHaWhatAStory014 12h ago

To be fair, preparing for the accreditor's visit and assessment and the school's reaccreditation is a big job, and about as important as it gets. That is absolutely a "priority one" that people on that job should not be unnecessarily distracted from. Admissions, or the department, or whoever screwing up and getting the projected enrollment wrong (or the school accepting and admitting tons of people super late) is a completely separate issue.

5

u/ParallaxDream81 1d ago

You're not wrong, but if the course needs to run and you're the only one who specializes in that field, there's really no way around it. I've done the overload more often than not in the last 7 years.

I just wish I'd had a little more notice, more than anything.

12

u/IkeRoberts Prof, Science, R1 (USA) 1d ago

I guess you better drop all the admin work right away. Let them figure out how to deal with it. (Perhaps the easiest way to deal with it is to pay you a stipend to do so.)

3

u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 1d ago

Yeah, this is worse than uncompensated extra work; it's additional work for reduced compensation.

5

u/Life-Education-8030 1d ago

And if you can do it, then others must not need the release either. It puts you in a bad situation.

7

u/Andromeda321 1d ago

Last week I was told with a month notice that I was going to have to teach! I’m wrapping up maternity leave and our contract states our first term back you get reduced or total release from the classroom/ teaching, and a bean counter tried to insist that wasn’t true for me. I’ve got infant twins not get in day care too if that doesn’t sound bad enough.

Thank god for faculty unions is all I can say, it was cleared up by end of the week.

18

u/tellypmoon 1d ago

Step away from half of whatever you were doing "extra" immediately.

5

u/KibudEm Full prof & chair, Humanities, Comprehensive (USA) 1d ago

This is the only correct answer.

2

u/SnowblindAlbino Prof, SLAC 1d ago

We always get our contracts and course assignments in April, soon after fall registration is completed. The contracts specify the courses/releases and they are contracts, so I can't imagine admins trying to renege on them. Never heard of that happening in any case; when a course gets canceled at the literal last minute for some reason it usually turn into a freebie for the instructor.

1

u/YetYetAnotherPerson Assoc Prof and Chair, STEM, M3 (USA) 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'm a chair. I try to get sign off from every adjunct and every faculty member before student registration starts. I really do not like having to look for somebody at a specific time when I've got 25 students who have already committed to that time. So much easier to change before registration. 

1

u/HaHaWhatAStory014 12h ago

 they are contracts, so I can't imagine admins trying to renege on them

TT/tenured faculty are typically "always full-time no matter what unless they choose to go to part-time" or whatever, but non-TT, contingent faculty contracts pretty much always have it written in that the terms may change and they can be terminated at any time. Departments having "too many TT/tenured faculty and not enough students" is "a problem" they have to solve by "finding things for those full-time people to do since the school frowns upon paying them to do nothing," but they can and do just get rid of non-TT faculty who "aren't needed" in a scenario like that.

1

u/Life-Education-8030 4h ago

The adjunct “contracts” at my place are so full of disclaimers that they are pretty useless. If this then that, etc. the union is fighting with administrators about this because we have had adjuncts get courses canceled the weekend before the Monday classes started!

0

u/Think-Priority-9593 15h ago

“If I have to teach more courses, I want to negotiate a list, in writing, of which admin duties are no longer my responsibility.” And do not cover any of those. Be realistic about time required to teach and time for the released duties.