A&S Planning and Budget Commmittee Minutes April 8 1999
- Members attending:
- Ginger Brown (Staff Rep)
- Stephen Edgell
- Robert Kimball
- Nathan Schwartz (Chair)
- Wiley Williams
- Visitors attending:
- David Howarth (Associate University Provost)
- Shirley Willihnganz (Acting Dean)
The first part of the meeting was taken up by continued work on the Committee's report to the faculty on the budget. Several parts of the document are now in final form.
A memo regarding pay equity from Mary Korfhage to Shirley Willihnganz was circulated. It seems that the University has performed some statistical modeling and is intending to apply the results to making salary adjustments for this next fiscal year that are intended to adjust for gender pay inequities. The money (approximately $37,000) to fund this will come from the 5% salary increment pool. The Committee discussed the memo, and a number of members raised serious questions and objections concerning the methodology and conclusions of the study that is to determine the increments. Time constraints at the meeting and the pressure of a next-day deadline for a response to the Dean prevented the Committee from drafting a resolution at this meeting. Edgell agreed to enumerate the various concerns raised by the Committee members and to forward them to the Dean by the next day. He expressed these concerns as a resolution (attached below) and before sending it to the Dean received some comments from members which were incorporated into it.
Dave Howarth discussed with the Committee the implications of the proposed revisions in the University's general education policy and requirements. The Provost's office is trying to obtain a University-wide buy in to the concept which would include support in terms of teaching by more than just A&S.; Of course, A&S; will still have the preponderance of responsibility for providing the courses. The idea is to streamline the process of getting courses approved as meeting one or more general education requirements. The requirements would be in terms of general competencies, and, hopefully, there would be a large list of approved courses that would meet each of them. Further, it is envisioned that many of the courses would be able to satisfy two or even three of the requirements. The hope is to produce a savings in money, with fewer courses being required for general education. Further, a savings to A&S; is hoped for through some of the courses being taught by other units. Also this should more evenly distribute the general education load across the departments of A&S.; With fewer courses to teach, there should be some savings in lecture lump sum that might be distributed to departments that made general education improvements. The plan also calls for departments to become more creative in how they take care of educating their majors. The hope here is that a reduction in the total number of courses could be realized. However, this might cause an increase in the number of independent study hours. The load on the faculty must be considered here. Overall, he reported that he expects a savings in the College's budget to result from the changes. Hence, the budget impact would be positive rather than negative for us.
However, the discussion was in general terms, and without a firm proposed General Education Plan, the committee could not make a real analysis of the possible budgetary impact
The minutes of the meeting of 4/1/99 were approved.
The next meeting was set for Thursday, April 15, from 1:00 to 2:00 in a place to be announced..
The time for the meeting having expired, the meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
Steve Edgell
Arts & Sciences Planning and Budget Committee
Resolution
The Planning and Budget Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences, having carefully reviewed the proposed plan for salary correction for gender bias, resolves the following:
Whereas
1. Gender is never a valid criterion in determining one's salary, and any differences due solely to the factor of gender should be corrected.
2. The current proposal is fatally flawed in that it proposes to correct only bias in one direction, that of females making less due to gender. Within the College in the Humanities Division, the proposal identifies a $795 deficit for females at the associate professor level and proposes to correct that, but ignores about the same difference ($770) deficit for males at the assistant professor level and the vastly larger deficit of $5765 at the full professor level. This is highly unfair and perhaps legally actionable. Also ignored are large deficits for males at all levels within the Social Sciences Division (assistants: $1746, associates: $2051.37, full: $3677.24). In the Natural Sciences Division, it is proposed to rectify a deficit for females at two ranks, while ignoring one for males at the other rank.
3. The deficits identified are often due, not to gender, but to statistical outliers within the system. For example, in the Natural Sciences Division a deficit of $2976 is identified for females at the assistant professor level. Looking at the distribution of salaries at that level, one finds that there is one male who makes $13,000 more than anyone else. That heavily skews the average for males. Giving each female the $3,000 raise will result in the majority of females making more than ALL of the males except for that one. On the other hand, the female assistant professors in the Humanities Division were not targeted for an adjustment because one of them is paid considerably more than the rest.
4. It is University policy differences in salary should be a function of merit. The regression equations used to set the expected salary for each individual did not include any measure of merit. Only simpler, more mundane variables (rank, time in rank, highest degree, and division) that probably have little relation to merit were included. Division is not a good variable to put in the equation. It should have been department. The departments within each division are not equal enough to be combined. This problem is much increased by the fact that some departments are Ph.D. programs and some are not. Time in rank is also not a good variable because it is not linear. At the full professor rank one would expect the relationship of time to salary to be more logarithmic. At the associate professor level the relationship should reverse and decline with very long stays in rank. Highest degree has many problems. It should have been whether one has the normal terminal degree for one's field. That is probably almost constant within the College and hence would be worthless in the equation. The accuracy and correctness of all of the deficits found, whether they are against females or males, is highly questionable. The only allowance for merit in the current proposal is a veto of the raise for individual women. This all or none approach is far too coarse.
Therefore
We strongly recommend that this system not be implemented within this College. It will create many more problems and inequities than it will correct. We do favor case by case correction for gender inequities and any other inequities that are contrary to University policy.
