Reprint from the Wisconsin State Journal, April 14, 1997This afternoon the UW-Madison Faculty Senate will be asked to pass a resolution reaffirming its commitment to racial and ethnic diversity in minority enrollment and retention.
What does passing such a resolution mean? Will the UW-Madison suddenly become successful in recruiting and retaining minorities? Or will these efforts to increase minority access lead to an erosion of quality?
Proponents of diversity will undoubtedly emphasize the resolution’s symbolic importance in the quest to expand educational opportunities for targeted minority groups. They will probably also argue that continued admission of small numbers of underqualified applicants, based on preferential standards for minority groups, can hardly compromise the UW-Madison’s high quality. But, the truth is that it can, it has, and it will continue to compromise that quality.
Diversity will compromise quality because the UW-Madison faces a critical time of diminishing resources. State budget resources are essentially stable. Gaining more revenue through increased tuition will be difficult. Federal funding is becoming increasingly scarce. These developments require a careful reappraisal of how UW-Madison allocates its fiscal and human resources.
The need for additional resources is quite apparent to those who know the UW-Madison. Of particular importance is the inadequate number of faculty to teach its large student body. Consider these two immediate needs.
First, added faculty are needed to implement the new general education requirements that took effect this year after unanimous endorsement by the Faculty Senate several years ago. The rhetoric/composition requirement, for example, calls for small writing courses designed to help second semester freshmen sharpen their writing skills and enhance their learning by working more closely with senior faculty. With more than 5,000 new freshmen enrolling each year, this will mean scheduling an additional 250 writing classes. The new requirement also calls for offering small, faculty-taught writing intensive courses in each undergraduate major. More faculty are desperately needed to make these two components of the new rhetoric/composition requirement effective.
Second, over the past 10 years the number of new young faculty has fallen sharply. This poses a even more serious threat to the future quality of UW-Madison. Because of tight budgets, overall faculty size dropped from just under 2,400 in 1986 to about 2,200 last year as faculty retired
or departed for other jobs. Virtually all the decline occurred in the 30-34 and 35-39 age categories. The reason—so few new young faculty were hired as replacements. Not only has average class size increased, but the institution and its future students are deprived of new young scholars who will become the backbone of the future faculty.
What is the connection between the quality and diversity? UW-Madison’s diversity program now costs approximately $5 million dollars annually. This program pays the salaries of minority recruiters and advisers, special programs for minority students, other special programs for pre-college minorities, substantial amounts of financial aid, multicultural activities, and the like. Strong pressures to increase spending beyond this amount are coming from the Civil Rights Defense Coalition, an activist student group, and from the faculty Committee on Academic Affairs of Minority/Disadvantaged Students which is proactive on diversity issues.
But, what if the funds now devoted to diversity programs could be reallocated to hire more new young faculty? Consider the possibilities. Suppose the average salary for newly hired junior faculty members is $50,000, which is a bit on the high side. Hiring 100 young faculty members, thereby cutting in half the 200-person shortfall of younger faculty, would cost $5 million. This is exactly the amount currently spent on diversity programs.
The effect of this reallocation would be dramatic. The newly hired, bright, talented new PhDs would bring to the campus new energy and ideas. They would augment the depleted instructional staff. And, they would stimulate path-breaking scholarship and cutting-edge research.
To capitalize on such an opportunity, every effort must be made to search out and hire the very best people available. The faculty must not allow itself to be constrained by assurances, already given to the Civil Rights Defense Coalition, that some predetermined racial/ethnic/gender mix of new faculty will be hired. If newly hired faculty end up being a diverse group, that is fine. Diversity, however, must be secondary to hiring the most talented people available.
Rather than simply passing a diversity resolution tomorrow, UW-Madison’s Faculty Senate has an opportunity to debate how best to allocate its seriously limited budget resources. Should it continue spending $5 million on a diversity program with a 25-year record of failure. Should it spend this same sum to strengthen the institutions’s core activities, namely, instruction, research, and public service, by hiring more faculty? Or should it seek some balance between these two choices? If so, what should that balance be?
My own preference is to hire more faculty and help reinvigorate UW-Madison’s central mission, that of creating, integrating, transferring, and applying knowledge.
The Faculty Senate has an opportunity to demonstrate the courage of its convictions. But, what are its convictions? We shall see.