- Rider's faculty to student ratio has remained low, and is currently 12:1.
- Despite recent enrollment declines, the share of Rider’s budget that goes to instruction has remained consistent, and is slightly higher than our peer private universities.
- The AAUP is correct that full time faculty and chairs are 35% of salaries and benefits, but several tables in the AAUP report quoted in The Rider News, are incorrect, because the AAUP included part time faculty costs in the remaining 65% "administration" as quoted in The Rider News. The correct percentage is 54%, which in addition to administrators includes clerical staff, facilities and public safety employees, and other non-administrators. IPEDS does not separately report part-time faculty pay. All colleges report part-time faculty pay as instructional cost in IPEDS.
- Increases in both staff and faculty between 2001 and 2012 were to support expanded enrollment and student services, new academic and support programs, new residence halls and other facilities, and broader technology options. These positions support students.
- Rigorous processes have been in place for more than 15 years to approve all administrative staffing and compensation changes. Raises over this period have been consistent between faculty and non-faculty employees. Increases in adjunct and overload pay are categorized as "administration"; in the AAUP analysis, which only separates out full-time faculty and chairs.
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- The AAUP has worked closely with the Administration over the years to keep the faculty-student ratio low. The benefits for doing so far exceed the costs. Keeping the ratio low is both beneficial from a pedagogical perspective but also gives the university a comparative advantage relative to peer institutions in attracting students to attend the university. This statement lacks context. On a percentage basis for the period from 2004-2012 the distribution of instructional costs has shifted away from full-time faculty and chairs to contingent faculty and administrative staff.
- In 2004, the percent of total salaries and benefits for full-time faculty and chairs was approximately 39% for full-time faculty/chairs and 14% for non-full-time faculty/chairs (a difference of 25 percentage points between the two groups). By 2012, the difference between groups was 19 percent instead of the previous 25 percent (36 percent for full-time faculty/chairs and 17 percent for non-full-time faculty chairs), a decrease of 6 percentage points.
- If funding were to have remained "consistent," we should expect the initial difference of 25 percentage points to hold over time. This substantiates the administration's priorities over time which have placed non-faculty compensation over essential, core-mission compensation— that of the faculty.
- VP Karns' claim that tables reported by the AAUP were "incorrect" is unfounded. She does this by attempting to redefine numbers the Administration has reported publicly in the past. Specifically, IPEDS data lumps the cost of part-time faculty into "instructional costs." Now she has attempted to redefine instructional costs as "all-faculty," a term not used by the AAUP in its initial report.
- VP Karns' redefinition of "teaching" is a clear example of equivocation by the Administration in terms of trying to minimize the rise in administrative costs relative to actual instructional expenditures from 2001 to 2012. The AAUP accounted for this by taking the difference between the amounts spent on full-time faculty and chairs relative to all other salaries and benefits from 2004–2012. The remaining instructional costs cover courses taught by adjuncts or administrators, or by full-time faculty on an overload basis. Thus our December statement is true: only about one third of compensation goes to full-time faculty. As we also reported, this proportion has decreased over time.
- When adjusting for enrollment growth, incremental position growth and costs tied to the university's strategic initiatives and overall growth have not been equally felt across employee groups. For instance, other things being equal, for every 11 new full-time students, a new administration position was created. For every 38 new full-time students, a new full-time faculty position was created. The magnitude between full-time administrators and full-time faculty is about 3.5 more students are needed for a full-time faculty position compared to a full-time administration position. Even in light of administration processes, such as HRAC, to closely monitor non-faculty salary positions, there has been substantial increase in spending on administrative positions from 2001-2012. On an annual average basis administration salaries and benefits have increased approximately $1.7M per year. For full-time faculty and chairs there has been an average increase of roughly $753K per year. This is a significant difference between the two groups resulting in administrative salaries and benefits increasing at a rate of roughly 2.3 times more than they do for faculty salaries and benefits on an annual basis.
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