Last Thursday, the UW System Board of Regents held a meeting discussing various challenges the UW System and UW-Madison in particular are facing in recruiting and retaining academic faculty. UW-Madison, which actively tries to recruit the best and brightest professors from all fields, is constantly being undercut by other schools who offer better wages or benefits than those found here. Madison cannot continue to be the great research institute that it currently is if its employees are continually poached by competing universities.
Obviously, something must be done to reverse this trend. While the university could try offering faculty more benefits for working here at Madison, the only realistic long-term solution is wage increases. However, considering the current state of the economy, as well as cost of education, it would be in UW-Madison's best interests to focus on offering short-term, low-cost solutions to professors in an attempt to increase faculty retention and, in the meantime, research various ways of raising wages that would not impinge on student tuition bills.
Some people may argue that if a faculty member wants to leave, then UW-Madison should let them. After all, if another institute can offer professors better opportunities, why shouldn't they take it? We shouldn't even be offering these professors such bloated incomes in the first place - it only drives up the cost of education. The problem with that is eventually all the talent will be sucked from UW-Madison, and we will no longer be the prestigious institute we once were.
Thus, it is pertinent we focus on rebuilding our retention rates; however, the whole situation seems to be deteriorating rather rapidly. The rate of faculty leaving the university for better opportunities in the past four years has doubled compared to the rate four years prior to that, according to the Commission on Faculty Compensation and Economic Benefits Report of 2007-2008. Also stated in the report was the fact that UW-Madison professors earn, on average, 13 percent less than the average salary of 11 peer colleges to UW-Madison. If this trend continues, as more talented faculty members leave it will become harder to attract well-qualified professors to the university without offering them far more lucrative wages. Thus, the university needs to act now before we end up in a downward spiral of losing talented faculty with the only escape being major hikes in salaries and, subsequently, student tuition.
With the current state of the economy, the university can expect less backing from the state government, and since raising tuition is really out of the question (or at least should be), Madison really cannot afford to offer higher wages to faculty right now. Instead, short-term benefits, such as domestic partner benefits and merit-based rewards, should be the focus now. One rather low-cost merit-based rewards system that emerged earlier this year is called the Faculty Fellows Initiative. This initiative, which was started with private funding, creates five-year supplemental packages for outstanding faculty. The money from these packages can be used to further the research of the faculty members, who also gain recognition for their work. This is a great, low-cost alternative to attract younger professors, and more programs like this should be added to UW-Madison's arsenal in combating dwindling retention rates.
While the time may not be right for wage increases, it really is the only long-term solution to fixing this problem of faculty retention. Without increasing salaries, many UW professors are easy targets for rival institutes who can attract some of our best faculty members. Faculty will only remain for so long without increased benefits; it is evident a wage increase is the only option in terms of permanent solutions. While state funding may be lacking right now, once the economy swings out of the current recession increased state backing will allow the university to give the earnings increases that many of the faculty members deserve. Otherwise, UW-Madison needs to begin researching alternatives in allocating money for wage increases if the state government is unwilling or unable to help.
With the continual graying"" of the current generation of UW professors, retaining younger, talented faculty members should be our current priority. Although additional benefits may be a good, low-cost, short-term solution, wage increases are really the only long-term solution available. For now, though, UW-Madison needs to focus on these temporary options to retain younger faculty, lest we allow this problem to deteriorate into a major crisis.
Ryan Dashek is a junior majoring in biology. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
