Let Professors Go Away Often

In a letter to faculty last month, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) William C. Kirby told professors to go away more often. We would be glad to see them go.

In a policy shift that is meant to make Harvard competitive with other Ivy League schools and top universities around the nation, Kirby announced that faculty will be able to take a semester off at full pay for every six semesters they spend teaching in Cambridge—allowing them paid leave twice as often as under the old policy. Such sabbaticals are meant to give faculty a chance to do scholarship unburdened by their normal teaching and administrative responsibilities. The move was widely hailed by both professors and administrators as bringing Harvard into line with other universities whose policies on taking sabbaticals are much more generous.

“In particular Princeton and Yale have paid leave policies that were markedly better than the FAS policy had been,” wrote Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Vincent Tompkins in an e-mail. “Our new policy more closely approximates what is in place at those and a number of other leading institutions.” Yale gives one semester of fully paid leave for every five spent teaching; Princeton’s rules for paid leave are based on the number of tenured professor in a department and do not depend solely on length of service. Stanford, on the other hand, is more parsimonious; it gives one quarter of full paid leave for every 12 quarters of teaching, approximately the same as Harvard’s old policy.

The liberalization of the sabbatical rules makes Harvard more competitive with other institutions in hiring and retaining top professors. Indeed, the generosity of leave policies could be even more important than salary size in persuading professors to come to Harvard. For scholars, being given the time to do their work is a top concern.

Nevertheless, having more professors go away will put extra strain on those who stay. Department chairs will have to juggle schedules to ensure that popular courses are offered consistently. Hiring more faculty is one way to help departments compensate for the loss of more professors for longer periods of time, and so this change should add impetus to Kirby’s plan to expand significantly the size of the faculty. For now, departments have been instructed to submit three-year plans that will take into account the temporary loss of faculty members who take advantage of the new leave policy. These plans should allow departments to ensure the breadth and quality of their course offerings. Moreover, the plans should be made available to students so they can plan their schedules.

Some professors will take unexpected leaves regardless of Harvard’s leave policies, especially when they receive lucrative research grants. For that reason, departments should be given a degree of flexibility in granting leaves. Of course, if departments get this flexibility, the distribution of sabbaticals must be done fairly, without cronyism or preference for big-name professors.

The biggest advantage of letting professors go away more often is that they will have more time to maintain their places at the top of their fields. They might even return with more energy and enthusiasm for teaching undergraduates. Thus, students should be happy to see professors go away, in the hopes that both the quality of their research and their dedication to teaching will be rejuvenated upon their return.