Northwestern is in a position to “make a killing” in the market to hire new faculty, University President Morton O. Schapiro told THE DAILY Thursday.
“We’re continuing to hire,” he said. “Compared to other universities, getting only about 18 percent or so of our budget from the endowment puts us in a much better position than the ones who are getting 50.”
There are two aspects to hiring: replacing a faculty member who has left and fulfilling a request for a new position, Associate Provost James Young said.
“Requests are scrutinized more carefully than they have been in the past, and not all of those positions are approved,” Young said. “But NU, unlike some other schools, is not having to let faculty go for economic reasons.”
The recent economic crisis has had little effect on NU’s financial ability to fill faculty vacancies, he said.
In a report by The Chronicle of Higher Education last fall, 6 percent of mostly private surveyed institutions have completely frozen hiring, and 35 percent have imposed a partial freeze. A majority, 62 percent, reported the worst of their financial problems caused by the recession hadn’t passed.
Private universities have fared better than public, said Schapiro, an expert in the financing of higher education.
“There are not that many people out there, so if you can figure out the resources to hire, you can really get good people,” he said. “And that’s what we’ve been doing.”
The Department of Spanish and Portuguese is actively recruiting, said Josef Barton, chairperson of the department.
“We’re in a time of constraints on hiring, but they approved this search,” Barton said. “The University and this college department is aware of the challenges of enrollment.”
The department has recently faced student criticism because classes and waitlists filled up quickly.
Although a search for a replacement faculty member began years ago, it hasn’t been successful, Young said.
“Budgetary concerns have not affected the search for a replacement,” he said.Interdisciplinary departments without large core faculties, such as International Studies, have more difficulty with faculty searches than budget constraints, Young said.
“It’s difficult to find just the right person to fit an interdisciplinary bridge,” he said. “It might be more related to trying to find the right person.”
While the University is responding to departmental needs in hiring new faculty, there has been a reduction in hiring tenure-track faculty, Young said.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, tenure for new faculty has been in “relative decline.”Five years ago the University hired 65 tenure-track faculty, but last year, it hired only 52, Young said.
Young said he expects less than 50 tenure-track faculty to be hired this year, depending on how successful current faculty searches are. But he said economic considerations have not prevented existing faculty members from receiving tenure at NU.
Although NU is in an ideal economic situation for hiring new faculty, Schapiro said he is morally conflicted about private schools taking advantage of budget cuts at public research universities in order to recruit.
Still, it’s much easier to hire “superstars” from schools like those in the University of California system now than it was two years ago, and it’s in NU’s best interest to recruit, he said.
“We’re out there hiring, taking advantage of the opportunities,” Schapiro said. “You can tell I feel very mixed feelings about that, but I’m glad we are hiring in general … There’s not a lot of competition out there, so it’s nice to see NU out there.”[email protected]
