As his parting gift to UO Interim President Bob Berdahl signed off on 3 year contracts for top UO administrators like Jim Bean and Randy Geller. Jim Bean did something similar for Tim Gleason. We’re still paying for their happiness to spend public money on their friends. It’s good to hear that President Gottfredson is not repeating that particular mistake. Coltrane’s contract is year-by-year, for $360K plus benefits, and a Prius. Diane Dietz has the story in the RG.
But the latest word is that UO will make up the money Berdahl wasted by shorting the grad students on dental coverage and childbirth leave. The GTF’s have the latest on President Gottfredson’s contract offer, here.
Coltrane got a 10% raise over Bean, but while grad students teach 1/3 of UO’s credit hours, Gottfredson’s offer for them is only 1.5%. If they reject it and strike, it will be a disaster of biblical proportions. UO could double the offer for roughly what we’re paying Tim Gleason to consult on “strategic communications”, or quadruple it for what Sharon Rudnick’s sidekick is getting to negotiate for Johnson Hall. Our President’s preferences have been revealed, as those economists would say.
Watch out, if two many of the admins find themselves on year to year contracts, they might end up unionizing….
The GTFF situation at UO is a disaster for anyone doing research in a highly competitive field reliant on large amounts of extramural funding. Since both the state of Oregon and Nike do not care about university research as a economic engine further increases in GTFF compensation without offset to help fund labs trying to incorporate GTFFs into research is going to drive science and scientists out of UO.
I believe this is a common misconception in how the GTFF bargains for wage increases.
The GTFF bargains for increases to the *minimum* GTF wage. Departments, particularly those in the natural sciences, are free to pay higher salaries to their graduate workers. However, increases to the GTF minimum wage does not automatically mean that departments paying more than the minimum wage follow suit.
Further, one argument for increasing faculty compensation also holds true for GTF compensation: When overall GTF compensation is increased, it draws a better pool of qualified applicants for positions. Thus, the overall academic standing of the University is also increased. As the saying goes, “A rising tide lifts all ships.”
but what about the questions raised below by dog about tuition, etc? How much total do research assistants cost at UO compare to other state schools?
at the PostDoc level, two years ago, OSU mandated that PIs no longer had to pay for their retirement and a few other things
so that the total OPE on OSU postdocs is considerably less
than the UO (where its heinous).
So there are local examples. I have no idea why the UO doesn’t understand research ….
When I polled friends at other schools, UO had higher costs for every type of personnel in a lab–grad student, post-doc and research assistant. However, I don’t think putting a lid on stipend levels is the answer to being competitive. Clearly reducing tuition once advancing to candidacy could be the major way to bring better parity. It amazes me that the university sees federal, direct grant dollars, which these days are so hard-won and precious, as a mechanism to bring in extra dollars.
We lost a colleague to a school in Boston this past summer. In doing the math, he could take his group of 3 postdocs and 5 graduate students there and SAVE $100K per year! He had griped long and hard about how much more expensive UO was compared to other schools. He even created a table with data from friends at over a dozen other schools – UO was last or close to it in graduate student and postdoc costs. I sent the data over to several occupants of JH – never heard a peep.
yes I first started to get uber-cranky about this issue in 2009
when, after getting a grant, I realized that I could barely afford
1/2 a grad student on that project. I then did the same comparative exercise with other colleagues and forwarded that
info onto various decision makes. Yes it was completely ignored.
Pressing Coltrane on this issue has only resulted in negative consequences (i.e. now I am a pain in the ass for him). How the
hell can we be competitive with other AAU institutions (well of course we currently are not) if we can’t ameliorate (shit that’s a big word for a dog) this situation and SOON!
I don’t see why the GTF’s are negotiating for benefits and salary.
1. We know going into grad school salary sucks.
2. As a poor grad student, you’re better off out medicaid as the out of pockets payments are 0, and we’re generally too young to worry about preventative care. Medicaid is espeicially way cheaper if you are having kids (out of pocket is zero, vs $2k on employer insurance here).
If I was a GTF I’d be negotiated on research resources, time off for job market searching, and competitive awards to help dissertation prep. Your negotiating team is negotating over issues that barely make a dent in your lifetime earnings. What really matters is finishing on time and getting a good job. What you earn in grad school is peanuts compared to what you can earn after you graduate.
It always bothered me that “GTFs are workers” or this other folkloristic nonsense by the GTFF… Stipends should cover basic expenses in exchange for little or no teaching and in order to maximize own dissertation quality.
The bargaining team should bargain to be part of the next capital campaign’s priorities – more stipends, less teaching time, summers off, travel grants, etc. – and get the funds from the nonsense grad school fairs on campus.
well said Wow
in my limited interactions with the GTFF union (I have since given up) – have mathematically demonstrated that every time they
raise insurance that the new insurance + overhead now means
I pay 1-2 months LESS grad student stipend.
In my experience, the GTFF union has never understood that,
over the last 10 years or so, research dollars have been fixed (if your lucky) but GTF costs continue to rise. Ultimately (in the current funding climate) that means less grad students can be employed on research projects but I don’t think the union
a) believes this and b) understands this.
Wow is exactly right on what these negotiations should
focus on, i.e. better research infrastructure and opportunities for grad students. Hell, that might even increase and diversify our grad student population and improve our AAU metrics.
Wait, what did it just bark? Improvement, nah, that’s against our policies …
Keith- I am afraid I have to disagree with your assertion that raising GTF wages will draw a better pool of applicants. Well informed and highly qualified grad students will decide on training based on the faculty and resources available to them for developing their career. As the thread below discusses, seeking a few thousand $ now will definitely not pay off if faculty cannot sustain productive research programs which in turn provide graduate training opportunities.
But on the other hand I think it serves everyone to have well paid lab workers, and there is little reason for making GTF salaries be the source of grant dollar efficiency.
“Keith- I am afraid I have to disagree with your assertion that raising GTF wages will draw a better pool of applicants. Well informed and highly qualified grad students will decide on training based on the faculty and resources available to them for developing their career. As the thread below discusses, seeking a few thousand $ now will definitely not pay off if faculty cannot sustain productive research programs which in turn provide graduate training opportunities.”
I understand your point. Though, I think it would be fair to say that overall compensation is part of the overall mental calculus involved in choosing a graduate program. Speaking personally, even though I was offered a position at much more prestigious school, I chose to earn my Ph.D. at UO in part because of the compensation and health benefits (despite the fact that I didn’t need them due to my tech company being incredibly successful at the time) and because graduate workers were unionized here and had much better benefits (there were no health benefits at the more prestigious school). Additionally, frankly, I also simply wanted to live in Eugene. Third, I observed someone at a conference from UO in my eventual department who I thought was brilliant. So, ultimately, I think all these factors come in to play.
Many people seem to be mentioning the problem of tuition remission as a burden, it seems like that should be the focus of efforts to reduce costs.
Choosing a Ph.D. because of health benefits is most short citing thing, and definitely I would not want to work with grad students who make their calculus that way. Likewise, I’m not interested in folks who are getting their Ph.D. in Eugene because they want to live in Eugene for 5 years. If we want to be a research university, we need to move beyond this things, and change the nature of GTF bargaining, who are arguing about peanuts now, and not focused on their own futures.
More specifically its the high cost of hiring a GRA (graduate
research assistant) which is now about 58K per year.
There are things that can be done about this that have been
done at other, more sensible, research Universities.
At one point the Science Council (now defunct) had some momentum in this direction but it never got anywhere.
Two things:
After achieving PHD candidacy why are grad students charged
full tuition?
Why am I paying the same overhead rate on grad. student stipends when basically the facilities are already here.?
Eliminating those 2 times (and maybe the overhead on GTF
insurance) gets the cost down to about 40K per year –
much more manageable.
Kim Espy needs that 58K to subsidize her Prevention Science Institute
It would be interesting to have some real data on the cost of graduate research assistants at UO vs. other schools — our OUS comparators perhaps?
I don’t have this — does anyone else?
I know postdocs are sky-high at UO because of the benefits structure — the “PERS rathole” as a colleague puts it.
Interesting discussion here about high costs of postdocs and grad research assistants at UO, and the indifference of JH to the problem.
It seems that they don’t make the connection between the high imposed costs and UO’s flagging prowess in “research productivity” and grant-raising. And UO’s well-known precarious position in the AAU.
Is it that they just don’t care, or don’t see the connections, or too greedy to suck away whatever grant dollars we can raise? Or some combination of all of the above?
I think its basically ignorance and complacency
The problem is that if you remove >50% of graduate tuition dollars from CAS and the departments, then they will run out of their surplus faster. In some sense science PIs trade paying grad student tuition out of grants for having reduced teaching loads. With the new budget model, more graduate tuition ends up at CAS/departments, so it may be a perfect time to reduce how much tuition gets paid by grants without impacting departmental budgets.
Other schools seem to manage reduced teaching loads and having reduced tuition, but they have actual investment in research activities.
There is no ignorance or complacency on these issues. Long ago, the UO decided to classify postdocs a faculty rather than students (trainees). Who knows why that happened, as OSU classifies them as students (there are only three classifications possible on campus: faculty, students, or staff).
The Science Council worked on this issue for two years and a policy change was in the works that would address this issue, which relates directly to high OPE expenses of postdocs at the UO relative to other universities. However, having the union include postdocs in the bargaining unit now precludes any administrative action of this sort. Perhaps interested faculty who are concerned about the postdoc issue would like to work with the union on the reclassification. It would certainly help the UO in the long run, but would result in loss of benefits to postdocs, which is likely to be a non-starter to the union.
Benefits for graduate students are also fairly generous here, which adds to the total cost of support. However, as others have pointed out, it is tuition for advanced students that seems to be the largest discrepancy with regards to other campuses. This is increasingly important as tuition has been increasing over the last decade to meet the loss in state support.
This is largely a CAS issue, since reducing tuition would directly affect college finances. This might be a good way to invest several additional million dollars in the research enterprise, but part of the reason the university can afford lower teaching loads for science faculty (so they can conducted funded research) is because of the supplement in external funding via graduate student tuition. So are faculty willing increase teaching loads in order to reduce student costs? Or perhaps the college should transfer funds from other units into the sciences to cover these costs. Not pay start up for new faculty? Which is the best way to pay for this change?
These are the issues that face the campus, which I do not believe are driven by complacency. These are difficult choices that have broad ranging impacts on campus. Some are driven by what were probably historical arguments related to providing appropriate respect to postdoctoral fellows (appointing them a faculty rather than student trainees) and some are driven by the continuing disinvestment in education by the state, which creates a decaying fiscal landscape against which it is difficult to make radical changes like drastically reducing graduate tuitions without large ripple effects throughout the system.
It would be wonderful if the faculty could be involved in helping to address some of these issues, as only they can make the decisions about how their colleagues should be treated and then convince others of the appropriate actions to take.
Among the faculty there is no ignorance. There is among admins. Even some senior admins (including the most senior) did not our tuition and costs of graduate students is so out of wack and makes grant funding difficult.
It seems to me that removing the postdoc retirement contribution in the first years is the “least harm” option right now, since many postdocs do not ever see those funds.
Hi Patrick:
I’ve been looking through the transparency tool data, but it’s hard to make sense of it. Can you give us totals for RIGE spending on administrators, staff, and consultants for the last few years? The perception among the faculty is that it’s growing very rapidly. Have there been any savings from replacing the Huron consultants with in house staff?
I don’t think RIGE is the source of funds for this. Grad students in later years spend all their time in lab, not classrooms. If anything, a portion of grad tuition should go to RIGE to support the “classrooms” in which the grad students get their credit hours. This is now sort of happening with the help from CAS/depts with new-hire set-up packages.
Yes, I definitely don’t want to get into too deep of exposition on this website, although I’m happy to chat in person with anyone who is interested. Our hands are tied pretty tightly on the postdoc issue. I’m not sure what to do about that at this point, but it is not complacency. I wrote a new postdoc policy within 1.5 months of starting as an AVP, and we were moving it up the ladder when the president got fired and the union action started. Involvement of the postdocs in the bargaining unit immediately stopped any further work and effectively muzzled those in “management” (like me). This is the faculty involvement piece I was referring to. I appreciate that faculty can not make money appear magically. They can work with their union if they choose to, however.
The grad student issue can still be addressed, but it will take significant allocation of resources. As was mentioned above, this is not a RIGE issue since it is tuition based and RIGE does not have access to tuition dollars. Nor do we have sufficient indirect cost return to somehow “pay the difference”. This is really a CAS issue, and I believe that it is known and has been looked at. It would take a substantial investment on a recurring basis to address. Perhaps there will opportunities in the coming years to reallocate resources with this as a priority under the new budget model. However, it is important to realize that the new budget model could be used to redirect funds, but it does not magically make additional resources appear — it is a zero sum game. Again let me point out that I have no special knowledge about the new budget model; I know only as much as the next faculty member who is trying to pay attention.
I understand Bill’s question about reallocating existing resources in a logical fashion. It is not for me to speak on the Huron expenses, because those were before my time (and I don’t have anything to do with finances per se). However, those expenses were largely covered centrally so it is not as though there has been some big windfall within RIGE.
Speaking completely without any first hand knowledge, it is clear that central resources need to be spent on a variety of different things that change each year (rebuilding the computing center, paying for health care increases, covering weird aspects of bringing retroactive raises into balance on research grants, and always, protecting individual colleges from cuts in state funding). Would we all make exactly the same choices? Probably not. However, it is a little too easy to arm chair quarterback without sitting those seats and knowing the entire picture (much of which the senior leadership is not a liberty to discuss for legal reasons).
As for growth and staffing resources with RIGE. I appreciate the perception. Some of this is caused by the fact that announcements come out when new people are hired, but not when their contracts are not renewed. I believe that the exact figures will be part of the Senate report (again, not strictly my area), but overall staff numbers in most areas have been stable or decreased except in two units. One is SPS, which was a disaster and needed to be re-staffed to replace Huron, as indicated. The other is in the human subjects compliance area, which was also in danger of running into serious problems before changes were made (and it is now a really terrific unit). I don’t know the numbers that Bill is checking out, but I’m guessing that overall expenses probably have grown for these reasons, not to mention raises and other things that have been part of normal operations across the campus over the last year. I’m afraid that these are necessary operations for maintaining our responsibilities to the federal government. Not making the necessary investments here has fairly severe risks that are not worth entertaining.
Patrick, one problem is that these requests for faculty involvement seem to fall into a pattern: admin pose a choice (do you want higher teaching loads for reduced grad cost?) and then faculty immediately ask about other possibilities as UOM does below (“how about cutting Huron as a third choice?”) and then communication breaks down and both sides end up frustrated.
The college would usually reply that the resources are pushed to the department, so individual departments are free to make this investment if they think that it is the best way to translate tuition dollars into research impact. Department heads are usually more concerned about investing these resources in hiring faculty, lecturers and GTFs, however. It is within the power of each department to make this a priority if they so choose. Of course we do not want to choose this. We want additional resources, not re-allocation of our existing resources. However, that just pushes the re-allocation question up one level.
I think the main issue is that rather than tuition being free for grad students and departments, the budget model changed so departments pay the tuition, but they got more money. In economics that’s called a compensated price change. Yes you could afford the same grad students you could before, but now because you are paying tuition this increases the price of GTF’s relative to NTTF’s. Any surprise with budget changes that NTTFs have grown much fast than GTF’s?
The bad part is that in the long run moving towards NTTFs and away from GTFs will be one of several things kicking us out of the AAU.
okay I stand corrected
instead of ignorance and complacency*
let’s go with gridlock and entrenchment
Bottom line: despite Patrick’s and others reasonably good intentions there has yet been no action on this critical item because of ____________________________ (fill in the multitude of reasons)
I don’t really care what goes in the ________________________
I just want my limited research dollars to provide better support
In fact, in my own case, I usually end up supporting graduate students at *other* universities because its cheaper and I can get more done.
*Grad support here, in my view, is fundamentally broken, and if we can not fix something that is fundamentally broken then why doesn’t that reflect ignorance and complacency? (that is a rhetorical question)
PIs would reply that making research cost-effective is something that needs participation from all levels and sources of funds. If it is recognized as a priority, then it seems short-sighted to dump the responsibility for fixing the problem to units that may or may not be in the best position to address it. It isn’t strategic to support lower priorities because of administrative walls.
Patrick says: “However, it is a little too easy to arm chair quarterback without sitting those seats and knowing the entire picture (much of which the senior leadership is not a liberty to discuss for legal reasons).” THAT is scary. Have past, or present, Administrations put the UO in legal jeopardy? It would be kind, and wise, of Patrick to indicate the nature, if not the particulars, of the “legal reasons”.
Nothing sinister here (and I don’t have deep inside knowledge). I’m talking about things such as personnel matters, discussions on union actions, existing contracts between the university and third parties, legal investigations, grievances, etc. Anonymous bloggers can say many things that the legal representatives of the institution can not. There is a natural asymmetry here that should be recognized.
Since I’m on a roll in this thread (and this will be my last post), there is one more topic along these lines that is likely to be forthcoming. The collective bargaining agreement includes salary floors for unit members. This includes individuals such as lab technicians who may have recently received their degrees. I have little doubt that when these negotiations are over we will hear things about the “ignorance and complacency” of the administration in driving up research costs (which is a possible outcome, as is making the hiring of such individuals on research grants economically infeasible). Much like the postdoc issue, however, these are legitimate members of the bargaining unit, so this is a union issue. Faculty who might be concerned about such issues should be talking to their union reps about this, if they are members, or other bargaining unit faculty, if they are not.
I believe the floors come out to 36k a year if they work full time.
Are there qualified lab techs you would hire full-time for less than 36k a year?
One of the issues with the floor is that a common practice in some departments is to hire a new graduate who wants 2 years of lab research experience before applying to grad school. This practice is likely to disappear since at near that salary a lab could attract a PhD postdoc with a vastly better skill set. Maybe the “new grads” were being exploited as cheap labor, but it was an arrangement that seemed to be mutually agreeable and involved considerable training.
Personally I don’t a new graduate with only a B.A. is considered ‘Faculty”. They shouldn’t be in the unit. Ph.D.’s only (maybe masters’).
Thanks for posting these serious comments. We should talk more about unintended effects of the union contract on research, though I think this is small change, compared to the negative effects Kimberly Espy has had. Nothing to say about the Blonigen report?
Why, who is Kimberly Espy?