The Utah System of Higher Education (USHE) is rolling out changes for public universities across the state. One new policy addresses instructional workloads for full-time faculty. The larger objective of R-485 is to “improve efficiency while at the same time maintaining and advancing educational quality.” The policy itself is not alarming, but how it is being implemented in certain academic units at the University of Utah is.
Research faculty (tenured and tenure-line) will not be affected, according to campus leadership, but there will be an increase in the “baseline workload” for career-line faculty (full-time instructional faculty). Changes are to ensure that workloads are “equitably distributed” and “that all faculty members contribute their fair share.” The problem is that many career-line faculty at the U already contribute their fair share — and then some.
As a career-line faculty member in the Philosophy Department, I typically teach a 3/3 course load. Because of my department’s needs and my areas of expertise, I rarely teach introductory courses or multiple sections of the same class. Historically, this has meant preparing three distinct courses each semester. Most courses I teach are labor- and prep-intensive, as they are more technical than the average philosophy class and often require additional time working with students outside scheduled class meetings and office hours. At my current workload, I work at least 40 hours a week when classes are in session — often more.
As U of U administrators in the College of Humanities are enforcing R-485, faculty with a 3/3 teaching load are generally expected to transition to a 4/4 load with no additional compensation. Unless my department’s needs change or I can somehow fill new teaching roles, the most likely outcome is that I will need to prepare for and teach a fourth course each semester.
Imagine your boss popping into your office and saying, “Fantastic work. Absolutely flawless. Don’t change a thing! Also, quick update: we’re increasing your workload by 33%. Same pay, of course.” How would you respond to that?
If the difference between a 3/3 and 4/4 course load does not sound significant, consider what it is like to be a chef. Preparing one gourmet meal is demanding but manageable; preparing two at the same time is substantially harder; preparing three at once is not merely “one more meal” but is exponentially more difficult, because each dish has its own timing, techniques and points of failure that must be coordinated; preparing four meals at the same time — well, you get the idea. The same principle applies to career-line faculty with teaching loads like mine: One more course does not simply add “one” unit of work. The total amount of effort, time and cognitive resources involved increases disproportionately for each additional course.
By most available benchmarks, locally and nationally, my salary is below the average for faculty in comparable positions. The reason my salary is sustainable at all is that I am able to supplement my income during the summer months. This supplemental income allows me to pay my bills and maintain family connections, including travel to visit loved ones during the holidays. I share this not as a complaint, but for context; many career-line faculty willingly accept financial tradeoffs so that they can have the job they love.
I sincerely mean it when I say that being an educator in Utah has been the greatest honor of my life. But loving your work and devoting yourself to it should not require sacrificing dignity, the basic principles of fairness, or minimum levels of financial or psychological well-being. Decision makers in USHE and campus leadership need to listen, because for a nonnegligible percentage of faculty under their stewardship, this kind of sacrifice is what is at stake.
A constructive path forward will require greater flexibility in how policy R-485 is implemented across individual academic units. Crucially, increased instructional loads should not proceed in the absence of good-faith consultation with those most directly affected. For career-line faculty in the humanities, a blanket policy increasing instructional workloads obscures meaningful differences in instructional activity, preparation demands and student engagement — and will almost certainly prevent faculty from “maintaining or advancing educational quality.”