Faculty members at Idaho’s public colleges and even some campus leaders fear that policy changes approved last week by the State Board of Education will allow administrators to furlough and cut salaries of tenured professors without having to declare a financial crisis.
The state board, however, disputes that interpretation. The changes are meant to give campus presidents more authority to temporarily furlough employees to balance their budgets during an economic downturn, such as the one the state is now facing, a spokesman for the board said.
But uncertainty about the new policy reigns, in part because of several changes to the language of the resolution, including last-minute amendments that still have not been posted publicly by the board, said John A. Miller, a professor in the College of Law at the University of Idaho and chairman of that institution’s Faculty Senate.
Dene Kay Thomas, president of Lewis-Clark State College, said her understanding is that the “policy does allow for salary reductions.”
Draft language of the policies, dated February 2010, says the chief executive of an institution can take employment actions without declaring financial exigency, including furloughs or other unpaid leave and reductions in force (not including tenured faculty).
While the new measure may mainly be meant to make it easier for presidents to assign furloughs, Ms. Thomas said she opposes the change, which she says she did not ask for, does not need, and will not use.
Tenured faculty members are generally protected from layoffs and other changes in employment status by their employment contracts, except in dire fiscal circumstances.
Joni Dickinson Mina, chair of the Faculty Senate at Lewis-Clark State College, said the policy changes essentially render faculty contracts meaningless, because they may allow presidents to change the terms of contracts and salary levels, regardless of whether the affected employees have tenure.
A policy that undermines tenure at the state’s public colleges will be disastrous because it will make it more difficult to attract and retain high-quality faculty members, said Ms. Mina, who is an associate professor in the Division of Business, Technology, and Service at Lewis-Clark State.
A letter to a faculty member at Boise State University from B. Robert Kreiser, an associate secretary of the department of academic freedom, tenure, and governance at the American Association of University Professors, does not analyze the specifics of the policy changes, but says the general tenor of the measure recalls tenure-related policies at the University of Idaho in the early 1980s that resulted in a censure of that institution by the AAUP.
J. Mark Browning, communications officer for Idaho’s Board of Education, said the intent of the policy is not to give universities the power to eliminate or change the terms of tenured positions, but to give presidents more flexibility in dealing with financial difficulties.
“It is an emotional issue,” he said, “and any time you’re dealing with budgets that impact people’s lives, there’s a lot at stake for everyone.”
