CEP Approves Alteration of Faculty Titles

The Committee on Educational Policy yesterday gave its approval to the Dunlop Committee plan for restructuring Junior Faculty titles.

Under the system proposed last May by John Dunlop's Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty, new appointees with a Ph.D. would start as assistant professors rather than instructors, and could be appointed to either three or five-year terms. The associate professorships would be reduced to a non-tenured rank--a three-year term offered only "to those who merit serious consideration for tenure."

Pay Raise

The change would raise starting pay for Faculty members from $7800 to $9000, and there would be corresponding salary increases at each level of a junior man's eight-year trek to a decision on tenure.

The Dunlop Committee report estimated that these changes would cost the Faculty about $370,000 a year--almost three per cent of the present unrestricted budget for salaries.

Though yesterday's CUP approval was crucial for the plan, it does not insure its adoption. The full Faculty (which almost always follows the CEP's advice) will vote on the change of ranks at its November meeting.

The new system would officially go into effect in July, 1969; but since many departments decide on next year's appointments as early as December, there is pressure on the Faculty to decide quickly whether to revise the title structure.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences budget is tight right now--Dean Ford has predicted a $2.4 million deficit for 1968-69--and Ford confirmed yesterday that the higher salary schedule that goes with the Dunlop Committee plan would probably reduce the number of appointments each department can make.

"A typical department may try to appoint five excellent assistant professors instead of seven excellent instructors," Ford said last night "and we are recommending that each department carefully scrutinize its non-tenured rolls."

The Dunlop report recommends that the transition for present appointees from the old rank and salary schedule to the new "should be made on a review of each individual case."

So each department will probably decide which of its instructors and assistant professors to elevate to the new titles and which to invite only to serve out their present terms. No associate professors will be stripped of tenure by the plan.

The rank of instructor will be retained in the new system for the rare case in which the Faculty wants to offer a one-year term appointment to someone who has not yet received a Ph.D.

Only one of the Dunlop Committee's recommendations on rank revisions was not approved yesterday--its solution to the problem of who votes at Faculty meetings under the new plan.

Everybody from a beginning assistant professor on up can attend Faculty meetings now; and with the new definition of assistant professor, about 80 to 150 more Faculty members would be able to vote.

The Dunlop Committee recommended freezing the status quo--allowing only assistant professors with three years experience voting rights, but Ford said the CEP feared that action "would look like we were giving them something with one hand and taking it away with the other."

Ford said the question was serious enough that the CEP would discuss it separately at a meeting later this fall and ask Dunlop to appear and explain the reasons for the committee's recommendation.