Editor’s note: This is the second of a three-part series examining how state allocation cuts and tuition increases have affected the academic climate and students at Iowa State.

As class sizes and tuition rates continue to climb, the amount of tenure-track faculty has diminished.

Although tuition for in-state ISU students has risen nearly 80 percent since 2000, 90 tenure-track faculty positions have been eliminated and not been replaced since 1998, according to the Office of Institutional Research.

Claudia Baldwin, president of the Faculty Senate, said as departmental budgets take a downward slide, faculty salary levels and new research projects have stagnated.

“When we lose tenure-track positions, a void is created,” she said.

Between fall 1999 and fall 2003, the amount of student credit hours taught by tenured and tenure-eligible faculty declined by 5 percent, according to the Office of Institutional Research. To compensate, student credit hours taught by nontenure-track faculty increased by 5 percent.

Sheri Fisher, senior in political science, said she hasn’t had many classes taught by tenure-track faculty while pursuing her political science degree.

“It’s kind of a mix; there are a lot of lecturers,” she said. “There aren’t a whole lot of professors in our major.”

Provost Benjamin Allen said no funds were available to replace the tenure-track faculty.

“The budget didn’t allow us to hire anyone,” he said. “It wasn’t that there was a hiring freeze, it was that there was no money.”

Not all departments have used fewer tenure-track faculty to cope with budget losses, though.

Paul Lasley, chairman of the department of sociology, said because of budget reductions, the sociology department has had to eliminate several positions, shifting the burden of instruction toward tenure-track faculty.

“As our budget has contracted, we have reduced our reliance on what would be called temporary faculty or lecturers,” he said. “I can foresee in the next year or two where we won’t have any.”

Allen said departmental faculty losses could have been better compensated without budget reductions.

“The departments simply had no money, so when someone left, they had to use those funds in that salary line to help meet [budget] reversions,” he said.

Jack Girton, associate professor of biochemistry and former Faculty Senate president, said although an increased number of teaching faculty members could be considered a benefit for students, fewer course offerings and added workloads reduce academic quality university-wide. He said the average faculty member works 58 hours per week, according to a survey conducted by the Faculty Senate.

Lasley said budget reductions create serious compromises to academic quality.

“The reality is based on the budget cuts of the past five or six years; there really are no other ways we can cut, so we have to start making shifts in personnel,” he said. “We have to shift faculty assignments and role responsibilities.”

Changes in personnel include increased use of tenure-track faculty to teach classes, which encroaches on research opportunities, Lasley said.

“Faculty would devote more of their time to teaching rather than doing research because we don’t have the resources to hire temporary faculty or lecturers,” he said.

Baldwin said he agreed added course loads detract from other responsibilities.

“We do have other roles besides teaching,” she said. “It can put a burden on faculty if they are still carrying a heavy workload in engagement or research. That directly affects climate for the faculty.”

Departmental downsizing compromises the interests of faculty in order to maintain course work quality, Lasley said.

“As you increase teaching loads or make modifications to shift faculty to cover the breadth of curriculum, it certainly results in less time in the laboratory,” he said. “We cannot be as broad as we at one time were or that we wanted to be. We have to focus on core courses, core curriculum, core research programs.”

Girton said fewer class electives and sections available reduces academic quality.

“There are more big classes, fewer optional electives, a greater reliance on teaching assistants, much more reliance on temporary faculty who are less expensive,” he said. “The university has tried to cope the best they can by saving money, but all of those things in some way reduce quality, so we haven’t been happy with it.”

Warren Madden, vice president for business and finance, said despite reduced resources, the university has worked to maintain academic quality through an increased use of technology.

“It has been a challenge; I think we have done a good job trying to offset it. I think the quality of Iowa State is still good,” Madden said. “Technology offsets some of the impact of less people.”

Lasley said fewer faculty members are available to sociology students today than in the past.

“In terms of proportions, faculty decline has been higher than student decline, so the ratio has changed,” he said.

Allen said budget cuts have increased the student-to-faculty ratio, reducing course quality.

“One impact of the budget cuts was increasing the student-to-faculty ratio, which is not good,” he said. “Fundamentally, if you keep small classes, that is the key to quality education.”

Zachary Roberson, graduate student in business administration, earned his industrial engineering degree from Iowa State. He said his class sizes became smaller as he progressed in his course work.

“I had no problem with the sizes in my major classes, but in some classes, like when I got a business minor, they were quite large,” he said.

Roberson said increased faculty availability would be helpful, though he questions its viability.

“I think it would be beneficial; I don’t know if it is feasible. There are too many kids to spend that much time with everybody – there’s too much work,” he said.

Fisher said some of her courses would be taught more effectively in small sections.

“Once you get up to the higher-level classes, they do tend to be OK-sized. But anything like 200-level and some of the 300s, it’s just huge,” she said.

Allen said he acknowledges the faculty reductions have hurt academic quality, but he believes the situation is improving.

“We have hired 75 faculty this year and those are the ones we want in the classrooms,” he said. “The tuition increases were necessary to keep those faculty in the classroom, and we still lost ground on that.”