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EDITORIAL MISSED POINT OF FACULTY SURVEY

by Herm Smith
Presiding Officer of the UM-St. Louis Faculty Council

The editorial published last week misses the main point of the Faculty Council survey. The 1998 survey results are so much at odds with that of 1996 that a longitudinal comparison begs explanation. Why have over two and a half times as many FTE faculty bothered to complete and return our questionnaires this year compared to 1996? Why have ratings of esteem for, and confidence in, Woods Hall administrators plunged in the interval? Why would the percent of faculty bold enough to say the Chancellor should step aside rise from three percent to 22 percent of the faculty over the past two years? The several articles and editorial that you have published from our data do not attempt to answer those questions while our report does.

The editorial last week also incorrectly concludes that only 22 percent of the faculty want the Chancellor to be removed because half of the respondents to a survey with a response rate of 44 percent answered that way. One cannot easily draw conclusions about what the other 56 percent of the faculty think who did not answer the survey. It is a reasonable conclusion to assume that many of them also shared the same opinions as those who did answer the survey.

In a mail survey such as this the most likely respondents are those who care passionately about the issue. Thus we should expect a high response rate from disgruntled faculty as well as a high response rate from happy faculty wanting to express that opinion. Three years ago the Council asked for information on years of service and rank as part of our annual survey. Although 52 percent of the faculty responded to our survey that year because of great interest in a salary and workload policy questionnaire, rank and years of service strongly determined who sent in the questionnaires. We found that untenured Assistant Professors with less than five years service did not complete and return our surveys. Not surprising, as Colleges and Schools "protect" junior faculty from serving on any university committees for their first four years so that they can attain tenureable records in teaching and research. By contrast, 72 percent of all other FTE faculty completed and returned that year's survey forms, including 90 percent of Full Professors. We can conclude that the more contact that faculty has with the administration and university governance, the more likely they are to form opinions that they are willing to express in our anonymous surveys.

Lastly, it may be of some edification for the current readers to know that faculties have a long tradition of being held responsible for the academic content and integrity of the curricula and programs of their universities. It would be an abrogation of faculty responsibility not to question and demand an economic impact analysis of any new addition to the university.