Speakers at Monday's dinner honoring the first recipients of the Royce Family Professorships in Teaching Excellence emphasized that strong teaching is what makes a Brown education distinctive. We agree. That's why Brown should reward anyone who contributes to classroom education - not with named professorships, necessarily, but at least with basic health and retirement benefits. Brown usually does this; it offers a healthy benefits package to its tenure-track faculty. But the University is now threatening to end benefits to some instructors who currently receive them, and to significantly reduce the benefits available to new instructors.
Brown assumes that adjunct faculty and visiting lecturers have other full-time jobs that provide benefits. But that isn't necessarily the case - for many instructors, including those in foreign language departments and the expository writing program, their Brown jobs are their primary source of income.
For many students, these instructors will be the most memorable of their college careers. They work as hard as regular professors on developing challenging and worthwhile courses. But because they are working so hard, and because teaching, and not research, is their passion, they often don't have isn't another full-time job to provide for health care or pensions. By not offering them the benefits afforded to other faculty, the University fails to recognize the dedication to Brown these faculty have exhibited.
The University hopes to phase out adjuncts and visiting professors in hopes of replacing them with tenure-track professors who will make long-term commitments to the University. Ultimately, this will be good for Brown. But it sends a terrible message to prospective employees that Brown can take away pension and health benefits without any notice.
A better solution would be to phase in a new benefits system gradually, so that no instructor would lose benefits he or she currently receives. Given that many of these non-regular professors do have other full-time jobs, the number of professors who would take advantage of such an offer would likely be small.
But whatever the size of the financial commitment, Brown should be willing to make it for the short time it would be needed. Caring for its current faculty and keeping Brown an attractive destination for other academics should be two of the University's highest priorities. We already know that rewarding strong teaching is one.
