Open Letter to Miami Senators

Summary (please read proposed resolutions at end of letter): It’s in everyone’s interest to have more continuing faculty at Miami. But if we abolish the TCPL cap without enacting protections for our teacher-scholar model, we’ll fail to prevent further increases in contingent faculty and we’ll enable further declines in tenure lines. 

Dear Senators:

On Monday, you’ll be presented with a resolution that abolishes the cap on TCPL.* Before you vote, you should know the history of the cap. It’s part of a larger story about the decline of the tenure track and the increase in precarious faculty at Miami.

As you may know, the “cap” is shorthand for a rule tying the number of TCPL to the number of tenured/tenure track faculty. Back in 2010, Interim Provost Skillings explained to Senators that “as the number of tenured and tenure-track lines decrease, the number of LCPL Faculty…also decrease[s]” (p. 266).

In other words, when tenure-line faculty continue to retire without being replaced (which has been happening for years), at some point, for Miami to stay in compliance with the rule, either the cap must rise or some of our TCPL faculty must go.

That is partly why, as the number of tenure-line faculty has declined, the administration has advocated for raising the TCPL cap. Under the 25% cap rule, if we’ve reached the cap and 20 tenure-line faculty retire without being replaced, we have to lose five TCPL faculty. 

Formerly, TCPL were on one-year contracts, so losing them was painful, but legal. The problem has historically been avoided by staying a few percentage points below the cap. Now, many TCPL will be on longer-term contracts. If the administration allows the number of tenured faculty to dwindle, they’ll be forced to reduce TCPL because of the cap—but they’ll be unable to get rid of them legally because of the contracts. Perhaps this is why, of the multiple recommendations made by the Ad Hoc Faculty Composition Committee, the administration is urgently pursuing only one: to abolish the TCPL cap.

The argument the committee has offered in favor of abolishing the cap is that if TCPL hiring increases, our dependence on VAPs will decrease. Reducing temporary faculty at Miami is essential for the good of our community. . But by focusing so much on TCPL in its report, the committee may not have fully considered potential consequences of abolishing the cap. 

There is nothing in the resolution before Senate that will prevent TCPL hiring from substituting not for VAP lines, but tenure lines. Changing the ratio of TCPL to tenure-line faculty will not protect or improve anything for TCPL, and will do nothing to limit faculty precarity. It would simply allow an increase in the number of faculty whose assigned role is teaching+service and a reduction in the number whose assigned role is teaching+research+service. That change ultimately could affect Miami’s status and reputation as a research university. A decline in Miami’s status will not be good for any of our faculty or students. Accreditation concerns have been offered as a reason why tenure lines would not be threatened by TCPL hiring, but those provide a bulwark only in a few disciplines. Miami’s accrediting body, the Higher Education Commission, does not consider tenure-line percentages. And unless VAP and other hiring of precarious faculty is restricted, nothing in policy will stop it from growing alongside TCPL numbers — at the expense of both TCPL and tenure lines. 

Senate is responsible for considering the bigger faculty composition picture. Let’s look back at what happened the last couple of times the cap on TCPL was loosened. In 2010, the percentage of tenure-line (teacher-scholar) faculty was still 79% (p. 268). The cap on TCPL was then at only 5%. After much debate, Senate agreed to raise the cap from 5% to 20%. Last year, again after much discussion and concern, the cap increased to 25%. 

When the first cap increase was under discussion in 2010—when nontenured faculty were only 21% of faculty—Senator and Physics Professor Bill Houk said this: 

“Senate should not consider limiting the number of LCPL [now known as TCPL] Faculty without also considering placing a limit on the number of Visiting Faculty. Unless a limit is placed on both positions, the University runs the risk that in the future one-third of Miami’s faculty may be nontenured faculty.” (p. 267)

Less than ten years later, Professor Houk’s prediction has come true. Precarious faculty numbers at Miami have ballooned. Except that it’s not one-third of our faculty who are nontenured, it’s nearly half. That’s half of full-time faculty. If you count part-timers, more than half are nontenured.

In the past, when we’ve loosened restrictions on TCPL numbers, tenure lines have continued to decline and precarity has continued to increase. 

Let’s not make the same mistake the Senate did in 2010. Let’s not accept empty words about valuing the teacher-scholar model. Let’s make robust policies that preserve it. Senate should abolish the TCPL cap only if the resolutions below are enacted in advance.

• Because sustaining and developing our teacher-scholar model and protecting academic freedom are essential to Miami’s identity and educational mission, the current ratio of tenure-line faculty to all categories of non-tenure-line faculty should be maintained and, when possible, increased.
  
  
• Senate will develop a policy to fulfill the Ad Hoc Faculty Composition Committee’s recommendation that temporary faculty are to be hired only for temporary needs. The policy will specify metrics for assessing whether curricular needs are temporary or long-term. 

*TCPL are Teaching Professors, Clinical and Professionally Licensed faculty.