Dive Brief:
- A trustee at the State College of Florida at Manatee-Sarasota is recommending faculty include a bid of sorts for their services on their job applications.
- Inside Higher Ed reports that the proposal has not been officially presented to the board of trustees, but talk of it has already prompted protests from faculty members and a former administrator.
- Greg Scholtz, director of tenure, academic freedom, and governance at the AAUP said he had never heard of a proposal like this, and that it would shift hiring decisions from the best an institution can afford to the “cheapest it can buy.”
Dive Insight:
The latest recommendation from Trustee Carlos Beruff follows the elimination of due process guarantees in renegotiating rolling contracts at the State College of Florida. There, faculty do not have tenure but long maintained some level of competitive advantage with their own system. Now, all new faculty are hired with one-year contracts.
Even the suggestion of compounding that by asking prospective faculty to basically bid out their services is sure to limit the hiring pool the Manatee-Sarasota campus can choose from. There is already heightened sensitivity across the industry about undervaluing faculty by relying more heavily on low-paid adjuncts. The Florida proposal is sure to have the eye of faculty nationwide.