AFT Michigan Higher Education: A Michigan Platform

Quality Teaching and Learning - Faculty

The Issue

Every student has a right to expect high-quality teaching by well-educated and prepared faculty in every course. A quality college or university must have a corps of full-time, permanent, tenured faculty working on the academic curriculum and teaching most of it. Courses should be taught only by highly qualified people - whether full-time or part-time - who are included in academic processes, particularly curriculum development and professional development.

Faculty must be personally available to students for advice and guidance. Students need opportunities to talk to their professors and advisors about their plans and ambitions, as well as their coursework and research. Technology should not be allowed to turn professors into mere faces on a screen or names on a computer.

Research, scholarship and creative activity are essential to the success of American higher education. For ideas to flow between students and teachers and reach society at large, knowledge must be continually expanded as well as transmitted. Colleges and universities differ greatly in their research activity, but good teaching always draws on new scholarship, and vice versa. Scholarly and creative activity is the engine that keeps America on top in commerce, medicine, science and technology. It enriches our culture and generates breakthroughs in every walk of life. Academic Freedom must be retained and strengthened.

Action Steps

• Professional Development: The state should support training in effective teaching for new faculty and professional development opportunities for all faculty;
  
  
• Part-time/Adjunct Impact: As a first step in assessing appropriate faculty staffing patterns, the state should conduct a study of the conditions under which part-time/adjunct faculty function at the state's institutions of higher education and the impact of these conditions on student access to faculty, student conferencing, knowledge of curriculum, accrediting agency standards, curriculum development, and professional development. With over 50 percent of the teaching in Michigan's higher education institutions done by part-time/adjunct faculty, such a study is long overdue.
  
  
• Academic Freedom: State policy makers should oppose the deceptively named "Academic Bill of Rights" which would have the reverse impact suggested by its name. For scholarly and creative activity to continue to prosper, we must preserve the line between indoctrination of students and appropriate pedagogical authority. The best way to accomplish that goal is to continue to have the faculty rather than college administrations or the courts interpret and apply scholarly and professional standards.

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