FLR Feb.3, 2017
To: Faculty Senate
From: Sara Singleton
In the past 10 days, House and/or Senate Higher Ed. Committees have heard bills on expanding tenure track faculty, student loans, and textbook costs and the various ways of reducing those costs. There have also been some bills aimed at qualifying the state need grant requirements in various ways, and since there will be at least one more of those next week I will leave that discussion until then.
In House Higher Ed hearings on Tuesday, January 24, I testified in favor of the expanding tenured faculty bill (HB1238) along with our student rep., Nora Selander, Western’s government relations person, Becca Kenna-Schenck, and UFW president Bill Lyne. Council of Faculty Reps (CFR) testified in favor, although the UW and WSU representatives testified “with concerns,” which seemed to boil down to the fact that there are other things they want more than this. Testimony seemed to go well. One interesting side note: as part of my testimony about the value of tenured faculty, I discussed faculty research and gave a few examples (thanks for providing those!) The ranking minority member expressed some puzzlement about this, and it became apparent that he assumed that research took place at the “research schools” and that faculty at the other institutions (the “regionals” or “comprehensives”) simply teach. Becca and I are currently creating a fact sheet about faculty research at Western that will be strategically deployed in an effort to correct this belief. It is important to do so given that legislators are frequently interested in the subject of faculty workload—Senate Higher Ed held a work session last week and this was one of the topics. Two vice-provosts—one from CWU, who spoke for the regionals and one from UW who spoke for the research schools—gave presentations on the subject. The CWU vice provost reported that the normal workload at Central is 80% teaching; 13% research; and 7% service. UW reported basically two courses per quarter, with reductions for research.
The other subject that both Senate and House Higher Ed Committees took up last week was textbook costs and open educational resources or OERs.. The cost of textbooks has apparently risen at 4X the rate of inflation over the last decade and reducing those costs is something of great interest to students and to members of the legislature. Bills on this subject have been coming up for a number of years. Becca Kenna-Schenck did a presentation to the Senate on what Western does to make textbook shopping easier and more affordable and someone from WSU Vancouver did another presentation on OER. Students also presented materials. At least one senator was quite aggravated about the subject, at one point exclaiming, “It’s a racket!” He seemed adamant that the universities adopt measures that will force the adoption of more OER resources, else the legislature will need to take steps of its own. He is not the only one who feels this way, so this is a subject that Senate may want to take up. It would be better to initiate a faculty-driven initiative rather than wait to have one foisted on us by the legislature.
OER also came up in the House, this time in the form of a bill (HB1561) that would create an OER pilot grant program. Proposal is for small grants to faculty to create OER resources for classes, to fund a coordinator for each campus and to encourage networking between different institutions. Lots of positive testimony from students, the institutions as well as CFR. Publishers representatives were the only dissenters. Once again, good to remember that only 20% of bills ever become law.
There have also been several bills dealing with student loan debt and default. On 1/25, in House Higher Ed, we heard HB 1169 –The Student Loan Assistance and Relief Act. The act has several provisions dealing with students loans, from measures to increase general awareness e of how much loan they are accruing, to providing options for repayment, and helping people whose loans are in default. Also limits on default judgments and garnishments of wages. The testimony on this bill was pretty horrifying—mainly from legal professionals reporting on the nefarious actions of loan collection agencies. Since this bill won’t cost anything, it might stand a good chance of continuing its way through the process. Judging from what I heard, I certainly hope so.