I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet. The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...
Saturday, February 27, 2021
Throughput
They are measuring our productivity in "throughput," a word I didn't even know last year. Basically, now many semester credit hours we teach per faculty member.
It's per unit, but also college and university wide. Our salaries are low here, but there would still be savings by using even more adjuncts. I make about what the full professors made in my first department in 1988... not adjusted for inflation.
And with part time adjuncts there are massive savings in benefits, and because of teaching loads. We don't have that great a difference between professor and FTE instructor salaries, because professors have low pay and instructors who have been there a long time will have had all raises and start to catch up. But they have higher teaching loads so produce more SCHs. To be super-productive in these terms you have to teach a huge freshman lecture and direct dissertations, those are the two things that get the most points in these terms, and in the right department you can be that person.
(*I think: the points you get for dissertations are calculated differently, but these are valued a lot and then any huge lecture means lots of SCHs. AND if in those you "use innovative technology" that's points.)
6 comments:
In Louisiana these are called student credit hours, or SCH's.
If I teach a 3-hour course with 15 students in it, I produce 45 SCH's. If it has 100 students, I produce 300 SCH's and I am more efficient.
It's why you have to have one large class and one quite-large one to justify a seminar.
Is that what throughput is?
Yes. That's what it is, essentially. Some kind of ration between FTE and SCH. I'm in acronym hell.
Oh, I see, unit wide. They ought to figure in salaries too then. Or not -- it might encourage them (to further adjunctification).
It's per unit, but also college and university wide. Our salaries are low here, but there would still be savings by using even more adjuncts. I make about what the full professors made in my first department in 1988... not adjusted for inflation.
And with part time adjuncts there are massive savings in benefits, and because of teaching loads. We don't have that great a difference between professor and FTE instructor salaries, because professors have low pay and instructors who have been there a long time will have had all raises and start to catch up. But they have higher teaching loads so produce more SCHs. To be super-productive in these terms you have to teach a huge freshman lecture and direct dissertations, those are the two things that get the most points in these terms, and in the right department you can be that person.
(*I think: the points you get for dissertations are calculated differently, but these are valued a lot and then any huge lecture means lots of SCHs. AND if in those you "use innovative technology" that's points.)
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