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NEVADA FACULTY ALLIANCE

ESTABLISHED 1983

NFA News & Opinion

  • Nevada professor of the year honored in Washington, D.C.

    13 Dec 2011 9:11 PM | Anonymous
    David Holland, assistant professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has won the 2011 Nevada Professor of the Year award in the U.S. Professors of the Year Program, sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

    The award recognizes excellence in undergraduate academic instruction. Holland and his wife were invited to a celebratory reception in Washington, D.C., where they also met with U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.
     
    “I was pleased to welcome Dr. Holland and his wife, Jeanne, to my office to congratulate him on this impressive achievement,” Reid said.  “I have always remembered and carried with me the lessons my favorite professors and teachers taught me as a student.  Students at UNLV are fortunate to have such a wonderful history professor in Dr. Holland.”
     
    Holland currently teaches U.S. history and religion courses. Before joining UNLV in 2005, he was a lecturer at Stanford, where he earned his Ph.D.

  • Effort to restore adequate health care coverage continues

    13 Dec 2011 1:30 PM | Anonymous
    In response to the very high concerns voiced by faculty and staff across the Nevada System of Higher Education, NFA remains actively involved in the System's efforts to restore adequate health coverage as quickly as possible. In this story, we report on two, related developments: 1. the work of the NSHE Task Force on Health Coverage seeking alternatives to current PEBP coverage through a short-term supplemental benefit for NSHE employees (possibly as early as next year) and considering a longer-term alternative outside of the Public Employees’ Benefits Program (which raises some legal and financial challenges to achieve), and 2. this Thursday's PEBP board meeting, where an alternative to current coverage will be considered for next year.

    NSHE Task Force update: Legal and Financial issues related to seeking improved coverage

    At last week's Board of Regents meeting, the NSHE Task Force on Health Coverage presented an update on its work, which included the following:
    • data from research (with the help of an external consultant) on current costs, coverage and insurance utilization of NSHE employees within PEBP
    • discussions with the PEBP board of improvements that we hope to see in both customer service and coverage
    • an exploration of longer-term alternatives to current coverage for NSHE employees through a self-funded insurance program outside of PEBP
    The report did not discuss another aspect of the task force's charge and earlier report, the exploration of an NSHE-funded supplemental benefit for faculty and staff for next fiscal year, as a stopgap measure. The board discussion showed a great deal of concern among regents about the current state of affairs and longer-term solutions, but no formal action was taken.

    In light of this discussion, and the high priority that faculty and staff place on this issue, it is worth explaining some of the legal and financial issues involved in this discussion.

    First, neither the board of regents, the chancellor nor the campus presidents have the authority to seek insurance for their employees outside of PEPB. That would require approval of the PEBP board and/or legislative action. That approval is not assured and would require a careful effort by the System as a whole to educate the legislature and the governor, and to convince them that this would lead not only to better coverage for us but be cost-effective for the entire state.

    Under current PEBP board policy, any group of employees that leaves the program must demonstrate that the withdrawal of those participants would not have a negative financial impact on the overall program of greater than 5 percent. If PEBP determines that the withdrawal would have an adverse impact of greater than 5 percent, the group withdrawing is responsible to cover all costs of its departure on the remaining participants.

    One question the NSHE consultant will study is whether the withdrawl of NSHE participants as a group would have a negative financial impact on PEBP of greater than 5 percent of its total program budget. If that were the case, then we would need legislative action to change that rule before we could pursue alternative insurance. (It would also mean, of course, that NSHE participants had paid significantly more over the recent past than we have received in benefits. If that is the case, it would mean that the reserve funds held by PEBP came disproportionately from NSHE participants – and this would be an argument for letting NSHE withdraw without having to pay for the cost to remaining PEBP participants.)

    At the November PEBP board meeting, NSHE leadership (namely, then vice-chancellor Bart Patterson, and now Renee Yackira, director of government relations for NSHE) testified to the PEBP board to express our concerns. They urged PEBP to consider, as early as next year, a "middle tier" of coverage between the current high-premium, fee-for-service HMO and the much-derided high deductible "consumer-driven" plan that replaced the old PPO.

    However, such a "middle tier" may not be financially feasible for PEBP to offer, because the costs to the program have increased at a rate of roughly 10 percent per year for each of the past several years. These rising costs are the main issue in the question of whether NSHE – and the state – could get better coverage for the same money than PEBP currently offers. The question of whether PEBP reimburses health care providers at higher rates than other insurance plans has been posed going back to the 2009 legislature, but has not been fully answered. (The PEBP board and staff have stated publicly that rising costs are due to over-utilization of service by participants and that the "consumer-driven" high-deductible plan will curb that over-utilization and cut costs. Critics of PEBP's coverage have maintained that the roughly 10-percent annual increase in the cost of the program has been passed along almost entirely to state public service workers, rather than reducing the rates it pays providers. This claim is hard to verify, however, because reimbursement rates to providers are considered proprietary information and are not publicly available to participants.)

    There is then the separate issue of supplemental benefits within NSHE. The task force was charged to consider this possibility and recommended consideration in its report of last January and has continued to discuss this in meetings this fall. This issue was not explicitly presented in the task force's report to the board on Dec. 2, but several regents did ask about whether immediate action would be possible.

    A supplemental benefit for NSHE employees would not require legislative approval or, based on what the task force has researched, PEBP approval. It would, however, require NSHE to spend its own money on supplemental benefits. The issue then becomes whether 1. NSHE wants to spend between $5 million and $15 million of its aggregate $1.2 billion budget on a supplement to bring health coverage for faculty and staff up to a minimally acceptable standard, and 2. there would be negative political consequences for the System for doing so that might outweigh the negative consequences for its staff of not doing so.

    PEBP board update: Middle tier of coverage to be considered this Thursday

    This Thursday, December 15, the Public Employees Benefit Program governing board, composed of gubernatorial appointees, will hold its regular monthly meeting (for agenda, backup information and links to view or listen to the meeting, click here). As part of this meeting, the PEBP board will consider adopting a "middle tier" of coverage option for next year. Such a "middle tier" would be more comprehensive than both the new (and much-maligned) "consumer-driven" plan – which offers choice of doctors but limited coverage until a high deductible has been met – and the health maintenance organization – which charges lower fees for each service, but charges higher premiums and offers limited choices. The proposed "middle tier" would restore deductibles to near-2009-2010 levels ($500 per year for individuals and $1,000 per year for families) and fixed-cost co-payments for office visits ($15 for a primary care visit, $25 for a specialist, $45 for urgent care). It also would restore low, set-priced fees for generic drugs ($4 for 30 days supply) and reduce co-insurance costs to 10 percent for many services. On the other hand, participants in this plan would not be eligible to contribute to a Health Savings Account, so they would receive no "seed money" to offset costs incurred during the year. Moreover, the premiums are likely to be much higher – and will not be known until February 2012.

    As a different alternative for creating a "middle tier," PEBP will also consider offering three plan choices: two CDH plans and an HMO plan. Under this scenario, participants could choose the HMO or one of two CDH plans with differing deductible, coinsurance, maximum out-of-pocket and HSA seed money amounts. One option would offer a lower deductible option ($1,200 per individual, $2,400 per family) that would also have a lower out-of-pocket maximum ($3,000 and $6,000) and a lower co-insurance (20 percent), but would offer only $400 (individual) or up to $700 (family) in seed money to the Health Savings Account. The other, higher-deductible option  would require individuals to pay $3,000 ($6,000 for families) before receiving coverage, and insureds could incur higher out-of-pocket maximums ($4,500 for individuals, $6,000 for families) and would pay a higher co-insurace rate (25 percent). However, participants would receive a higher amount of seed money ($1,100 per individual, up to $2,000 per family) and, presumably, pay a lower monthly premium.

    In all cases, premium rates will not be determined until February so it is very hard to know how costly each option might be for an individual or family.

  • Membership update on NFA and AAUP

    09 Dec 2011 7:01 AM | Deleted user
    Dear NFA members,

    I am writing you to update you on the status of our negotiations with the AAUP, which have been on-going for more than a year.

     

    In late January 2010, when we first learned that the System of Higher Education would have a second round of cuts in state support, of 7% - beyond the first 25% reduction in state support passed by the 2009 legislature, it was clear immediately that this would lead to program eliminations and terminations of faculty. With the authorization of the NFA state board, I contacted the AAUP's Department of Organizing and Member Services and requested AAUP support in three areas: legal support for the defense of faculty contract rights, membership recruitment and chapter development, and communications.

     

    And that's where it has stood to this day - NFA requesting support from AAUP whose response has been to propose actions that we did not ask for and which we doubted would help our situation. Of course, the AAUP did impose a new dues policy in July 2010 which would increase the total NFA dues bill by at least 15% and require more than half of our members' annual NFA dues to be sent to Washington. Paying such a dues bill would leave the NFA in the red -- even after having reduced our annual overall expenditures by nearly 20% in the past few years, while enhancing services in communications, legal defense, and government relations,

     

    Clearly the AAUP's demand that we pay such a level of dues is not viable. Is there an alternative? We believe so, but the AAUP has yet to agree to a serious discussion that recognizes the NFA's unique organization and set of member service we think are needed in Nevada higher education.

     

    NFA members are asking, rightly, are we still AAUP members? To be clear, yes you are. No change in membership status with respect to the AAUP has been or will be initiated by NFA.

     

    I think the more pressing question is what it means to be an AAUP member when the Association staff has been unresponsive to our needs, since January 2010, during the gravest threat to quality affordable higher education and to faculty employment rights in our organization's history?

     

    On legal defense, the AAUP has never contributed any funds or legal research to the NFA's legal defense program. Our legal defense efforts are entire the work of our members and, when outside counsel is retained, paid for by our members' dues. There is simply no AAUP support there.

     

    The AAUP's investigative authority of potential violations of academic freedom and tenure is supposed to be its most valuable service to members, but even as we've worked hard, and with some success, to fend off or reduce layoffs of tenured faculty on two NSHE campuses in the past two years, we've received little follow-up from the AAUP aside from letters sent to the president on one institution.

     

    On membership recruitment and chapter development, the NFA needs help, because our campus chapter presidents have been unable to undertake sustainable membership drives in recent years. We asked the AAUP staff organizer who came in 2010 - for all of two days - for ideas on how restructure and re-energize our campus chapters to be more effective but received no follow-up. (Indeed, our longstanding concern with the AAUP over its acceptance of Nevada members who enroll directly in any campus chapter -- and who do not pay dues to the NFA -- has never been addressed.)

     

    Most frustratingly, the AAUP seems to prefer to focus its communications efforts on causes that generate national headlines but are not in service of our members. It took the AAUP only days to issue a statement of support for "Occupy Wall Street protestors" but despite repeated requests, not any public statement or public communication has ever been made about the steep budget cuts or their impact on faculty in Nevada.

     

    Certainly the AAUP publications, including Academe, are tangible benefits to members, but the total annual cost per member for an Academe subscription is $35. However, the dues assessments we have received from the AAUP - but which we have not paid - assess almost all our members at the highest of the AAUP's seven rates , an average of over $150 per member per year.

     

    This situation is why the NFA state board voted last January to suspend dues payments to AAUP until a more reasonable balance could be struck between actual services rendered and the dues demanded. We have proposed, in writing and in face-to-face meetings with national representatives, that our dues be put into an escrow account to be used to pay for those services actually rendered to members in the state of Nevada - whether by AAUP or the NFA. The per capita cost of Academe and any actual leadership training by the AAUP would of course be paid out of this fund. But in the absence of an AAUP presence in the state, those funds would be used to continue to professionalize our operations, as we have done with communications very successfully in the past year.

     

    To prove our seriousness of purpose in devoting 100% of dues money to member services, we have cut our expenditures significantly. For instance, we have in the past year reduced the cost for state board members to travel to meetings by over $5000 by opting for videoconferences and conference calls. Moreover, we have cut staff expenses by nearly $10,000. And we have cuts in our communications, while greatly expanding the scope and influence of our communications, by consolidating print and electronic publications into a single production process and by reducing the number of excess copies of the Alliance sent to each campus. Moreover, we continue to benefit from professional work provided by state board members without compensation above a stipend to cover modest expenses and release time.

     

    But the AAUP's response has been, repeatedly, that "there is no alternative" to the exorbitant dues, and they have asked us to pass that cost along to our members through higher in-state dues. Our Board has refused to consider that option.

     

    We are now applying for what the AAUP terms a "State Conference Grant" which would reduce our per capita assessment, so this application would seem the perfect opportunity for the AAUP to work with us to help refocus members' dues into badly needed improvements in services in the state. We must improve the available services in the state, because we cannot continue to function on a "kill the volunteer" model in which the highly demanding tasks of Legal Defense, Government Relations, operations and, most importantly member recruitment and chapter development, are borne entirely by our members who also have full-time jobs and lives to attend to. Certainly we need more of our members to become engaged. But even so, we cannot continue to rely on members to function as full-time volunteers for the NFA in capacities such as board president, legal defense chair, or government relations officer (as we have done for years).

     

    To find that support and put the NFA on a sustainable footing for the future, we must have a response from the AAUP that addresses concretely our members' needs. We are hoping and expecting such a response during the first quarter of 2012. If it is not forthcoming, we will have to decide then on our next step. Should we seek another affiliation? Or should we set our own course and use the money that we have been holding effectively in escrow to hire a part-time or full-time executive director to oversee member services and chapter development? Other state conferences have field staff to assist their members and officers. I believe that in the next few months, the NFA ought to act definitively to plan for the future by budgeting for and contracting an organizing director.

     

    Many NFA members, including myself, value greatly our AAUP affiliation, but the fact remains that the NFA provides all its own legal defense, government relations, communications, member services and chapter development work with no financial, logistical or even moral support from the AAUP. Certainly there is much we cannot do on our own - and especially without a more engaged and active membership. So there is a need for AAUP support to expand and energize our membership if they can do that. In the next few months we hope to hear from them a proposal to provide the support and services we need, at a dues price we can afford.

     

    If such a proposal is not forthcoming, then we will consult the membership on the alternatives we as individuals and as a state conference have to achieve these goals, either in affiliation with or, if need be, separate from the AAUP.

     

    In closing, please know that the spirit of the AAUP - the defense of faculty rights and the advocacy for quality, accessible higher education -- is not in Washington or in our state board or our chapter officers; it is in each and every one of you as members. Your actions, your energy and your involvement, more than ever, are needed for the future of higher education in Nevada.    

     

    In solidarity,

     

     

    Gregory Brown
    NFA President

  • UNLV poll: Under new health plan, faculty and staff forced to delay care, skip prescriptions

    02 Dec 2011 11:26 AM | Anonymous
    Editor's note: The following statement was delivered to the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents during their meeting at University of Las Vegas, Nevada, Dec. 1, 2011.

    Good Afternoon. My name is Shaun Franklin-Sewell. I’m the UNLV Faculty Senate Administrative Faculty Committee Chair, and I’m here on behalf of all UNLV employees to address you regarding our health insurance.

    In order to gauge employee concerns about health care and Public Employee Benefit Program customer service and plan options, the Administrative Faculty Committee and the Fiscal Affairs Committee of the UNLV Faculty Senate and the Classified Staff Council conducted a survey of all UNLV employees. Nearly one-third of UNLV employees responded, so we feel it is an accurate gauge of issues employees are facing regarding their health care.

    Chief Executive Officer and Special Counsel Wasserman has received a copy of the survey report, and at this time, I will only report the conclusions we were able to draw from the survey.
    1. The authors of the survey understand that the Public Employees Benefits Program is responsible for these changes. However, the comments received through the survey indicate that, despite UNLV’s best efforts at educating employees about the responsible party, many employees believe their leadership, both at the institution and system level, is responsible. One Academic Faculty member calls the plan “a real disservice to YOUR employees.” Another employee says, “UNLV should be ashamed of itself for providing such shoddy, expensive, confusing and limited coverage.”
    2. Additional comments received by the authors of the survey also suggest that the concern about an inability to recruit and retain top quality faculty and staff is greater than it was prior to the close of the last fiscal year, in part because of the changes to health benefits. One faculty member reports, “I am actively looking to separate from UNLV/NSHE because of this increase.”
    3. UNLV employees are suffering as a result of these changes. They are delaying medical care and not filling prescriptions. They are making very difficult choices between obtaining medical care now and waiting for a medical crisis. A classified staff member comments, “My breast cancer meds are $350 a month now, for generic, compared to $5 generic before. I can't afford that.” These changes have dramatically impacted employee morale.
    4. The Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents should direct the NSHE PEBP Task Force to proceed with all due haste to obtain other health coverage for its employees.
    5. As the Task Force’s research has already shown, the level of access to health care that our employees are receiving is inferior – both to what we used to receive via the Public Employees Benefits Program and to what employees of other private and public organizations in Nevada receive.
    6. The Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents should implement a supplemental insurance policy and/or provide a supplement to the dollars provided in the Health Savings Account.
    7. We are not seeking “added” benefits. We are seeking a return to an acceptable level of access to health care.
    Thank you for your leadership, Chancellor Klaich, in creating the Task Force, and thank you for your leadership, Regents, in encouraging that the Task Force continue  its mission. Finally, thank you Senior Vice President Bomotti for allowing us to present these results as part of your Task Force’s work.

  • U.S. Secretary of Education holds town hall on education, economy

    01 Dec 2011 11:18 AM | Anonymous

    Hundreds of people turned out for a town hall meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, held Tuesday, Nov. 29, at the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas. The meeting was meant to address education’s role in improving the economy.

    Nevada System of Higher Education Chancellor Dan Klaich moderated the hour-long town hall, which also included panelists from local education and the community: Dwight Jones, superintendent of Clark County Schools; Ruben Murillo, president of Clark County Education Association; Calvin Rock, former pastor of Abundant Life Seventh Day Adventist Church; Luis Valera, board chair of the Latin Chamber of Commerce; and Elaine Wynn, chair for Communities in Schools and co-chair of the Greater Las Vegas After School All-Stars.

    “We have to educate our way to a better economy,” said Duncan, according to a Las Vegas Sun report. “In a competitive, knowledge-based economy, jobs are going to go where the knowledge workers are ... We can’t teeter around the edges; we have to look for radical change.”

    “Nevada’s education system plays a critical role in our state's economy and will take on an even greater role as we seek to create a better educated workforce and to better align our education system with economic opportunities,” Klaich added, in a statement. “Nevada’s students are our future and it will take a community effort to make sure we are providing them with the right access and quality to ensure their success and ultimately, the success of our state.”

    The town hall meeting was part of an ongoing discussion Duncan is holding with similar town halls around the country and via social media. To hear his Dec. 1 interview on KNPR’s State of Nevada, click here.

  • UNR presidential search progressing

    22 Nov 2011 2:17 PM | Anonymous
    The Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents has organized a presidential search committee and an institutional advisory committee to select the next University of Nevada, Reno, president. Their first meeting was held on Friday, Oct. 14, when the committee heard testimony from members and others about what UNR should be looking for in a new president.

    On Dec. 9 the committee will interview and select a search consultant and also work on the presidential prospectus. The committee will meet again on Dec. 16 with the search consultant and finalize the prospectus. Advertisements will be published shortly thereafter.

    Regents on the search committee are: James Dean Leavitt, chair, Jason Geddes, Kevin Melcher, Kevin Page and Rick Trachok. The committee will work with a large advisory group made up of professional employees selected by the faculty Senate, student leadership representatives, classified staff and others, including a number of community representatives.

    They are (faculty senate) W. (Pat) Arnott, Bill Follette, Stephen Lafer, Donica Mensing and Chuck Price; ASUN President Casey Stiteler; (administrators) Rita Laden, Emma Sepulveda Pulvirenti and Bruce Shively; Erik Williams, staff employment council; Denise Cordova, affirmative action; and (community) Alfredo Alonso, Kirk Clausen, Bob Davidson, Rick Hsu, Jean Jones, Mary Simmons, Angie Taylor and
    Harvey Whittemore.

  • Parker discusses jobs, economy at U.S. Capitol

    22 Nov 2011 2:12 PM | Anonymous
    Don’t blame Elliott Parker for the so-called super committee in the U.S. Congress not reaching a deal on deficit reduction by its Nov. 23 deadline. The University of Nevada, Reno, economics department chair gave his input with plenty of time to spare for a compromise.

    Parker was part of a select group of about a dozen economists – and the only academic among them – invited to Washington, D.C., for a Nov. 2 meeting on job creation and deficit reduction with the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, and Senator Mark Begich, of Alaska, invited Parker and the rest of the group, which included chief economists for FedEx Corporation, the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders and the AFL-CIO.

    Parker, who last to speak at the meeting, described it as a tremendous honor. He said: “It was reassuring, listening to all these chief economists describe what’s going on and finding it more or less agreed with what I thought was going on. The depressing part was the extent to which the senators we were talking to were frustrated. What matters most is who’s going to win the next election. It’s all about doing nothing until then.”

    The meeting took place in anticipation of the Nov. 23 deadline for a select committee of 12 members of Congress to present its plan for deficit reduction, or risk triggering automatic spending cuts. The committee resulted from Congress’s raising the debt ceiling earlier this year.

    Parker contributes analysis of economic issues to the Las Vegas Sun, Nevada Appeal and Reno Gazette-Journal, as well as Fox Business News. He teaches in Nevada and abroad on international trade and finance, China’s economy, comparative economic systems, economic development, intermediate microeconomics and micro- and macroeconomics.

  • What the funding formula Committee can do for NSHE students and faculty

    22 Nov 2011 1:55 PM | Deleted user
    In the winter issue of The Alliance, we report on the most important development in Nevada higher education news this fall: the Interim Committee on the Funding of Higher Education. This is good news, especially for students, who have faced significant increases in fees and tuition due to reductions in state investment in NSHE. These students have a right to know that the money they pay stays on campus and is not funneled indirectly back to the General Fund or to another campus through a flawed formula that holds back state support as tuition revenue increases.

    Beyond fairness to students, what does this mean for faculty?

    First and foremost, we should support this effort. It is our best chance for the state to consider seriously how it can address the education deficit. Just as Nevada trails the nation in economic recovery, we lag behind in the proportion of our population that attends, and graduates from, institutions of higher education. We all know that the Nevada System of Higher Education cannot hope to improve on that score without a serious conversation about how to better allocate scarce resources. Because the challenge is so great, faculty ought to support a thoroughly new approach to higher education funding, not just a revision of a formula that has been in place, with only modest changes, since the 1980s.

    We also ought to support a formula that better reflects the real cost and the real diversity of the work we do. The existing formulas are both too imprecise in their calculations of cost and too rigid in how they fund instruction. In current form, the formulas are supposed to allocate resources to match the type of instruction and the cost of the program. However, they are not based upon the actual cost of instruction of any program (in terms of either capital expenses or the actual market cost of hiring faculty in that discipline). Nor do they make any allowance for what we might call the "value added through instruction" -- that is, what students learn. So the formula ought to address the actual cost of instruction and the value added; because this will vary from campus to campus, introducing those factors will help support our differentiated missions. Our System is much too large – and more importantly our faculty is much too diverse in its training, its job responsibilities, and its performance – for a one-size-fits-all formula.

    Although faculty-to-student ratio is a part of the current formula on paper, no campus currently actually targets its faculty size to the faculty-to-student ratio for which it is funded. This results in a negative incentive for a campus to under-staff and over-enroll programs designated as “high cost” – and more generally to achieve the highest enrollment with the fewest and cheapest faculty. That incentive to overburden faculty is no formula for student success, and the new formula must correct this.

    Moreover, there is at present no component of the current formula for faculty work other than instruction, meaning the costs of a research infrastructure that supports economic development and technology transfer is not reflected. The lack of a research component to the formula burdens all faculty at all levels, and worse, it holds back Nevada’s economic recovery.

    Finally, the Chancellor has made it clear that Nevada will move at least some of its formula to performance-based allocations, which reward campuses that produce more graduates. Faculty ought to support that goal, since graduating students is our vocation as well as our mandate.

    But we ought to be cautious about performance-based allocation based not on total number of graduates but metrics that are believed to correlate with graduation rate. Such "progress measures" have not been studied sufficiently, in Nevada or nationally, for us to know which variables contribute most directly to degree completion. We need to study the data to know, for instance, if the ratio of students who complete their first year courses or who enroll on a full-time basis, actually correlates, on NSHE campuses, to more graduates.

    Until we can study what the data concerning retention, first-year course completion and other progress measures actually tell us about how we help students succeed, faculty will rightly be wary of a performance-based formula with too many progress measures. Unintentionally, it could create administrative pressure to inflate grades and otherwise “water down the drinks,” in terms of student outcomes, in order to raise retention rates.

    That said, NSHE faculty ought to embrace and support a data-driven overhaul of our funding formula that makes student success, rather than just enrollment, our priority.

    Gregory Brown is president of the NFA.

  • Nevada is one of six states picked for policy academy on higher ed performance measures

    18 Nov 2011 9:08 AM | Anonymous
    Last month, the National Governor’s Association, or NGA, announced Nevada was one of six states selected to participate in a policy academy on strengthening accountability systems in postsecondary education.

    The NGA holds policy academies on a variety of topics that states face. They are interactive strategy-development sessions in which leaders in a certain field address public policy issues and recommend best practices for all states.

    According to the NGA, the policy academy on accountability in higher education came about because of the need for more skilled workers in the U.S.; states’ long- and short-term limits on education spending; and the continued hurdles low-income, working adult and minority students face in completing college. In such an environment, “a stronger focus on performance and outcomes is necessary,” an NGA statement said.

    Besides Nevada, other participating states are Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Missouri and Utah. They are charged with finding ways to graduate more career-ready students with the money they have, and to improve their accountability systems to that end.

    Dane Linn, director of the NGA Center for Best Practice’s Education Division, said, “Governors and other policymakers must be equipped to use performance measures, whether in developing budgets, approving or evaluating programs or deciding how or whether to regulate administrative and academic services. This Policy Academy will help states focus on those measures.”

    Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval appointed the following team to participate in the policy academy on higher education performance measures: Heidi Gansert, Sandoval’s chief of staff; Julia Teska, Department of Administration budget analyst; Denice Miller, vice president of government relations for MGM Resorts International; Nevada Assemblyman Marcus Conklin; Dan Klaich, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education; and Neal Smatresk, president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

    “Nevada is diligently working to improve accountability systems and measures throughout the K-12 system, and this policy academy will enable us to expand that work through the higher education realm,” Sandoval said. “The work our team will be able to accomplish will complement the Legislature’s interim funding study and inform decisions in the next biennium.”

    The NGA policy academy includes two workshops, technical assistance from NGA Center staff and grants of up to $30,000 per state for additional expertise. Lumina Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding for the academy.

  • NFA Legal Defense investigates curricular review, litigates code violations

    16 Nov 2011 3:07 PM | Anonymous
    The legal defense committee of NFA is engaged in several issues that affect faculty directly, and which raise serious questions for faculty indirectly everywhere.

    In October, two tenured professors filed lawsuits based upon their termination from their institution as a result of the curricular review process. The curricular review determination sought to end the professors’ administrative assignments by sending both individuals back to academic departments that were slated to be closed. The litigation is predicated upon violations of the Nevada System of Higher Education Code and policy interpretations that do not appear supported by code language or precedence. NFA is providing legal and financial support for both professors.

    In a related matter, the legal defense committee is studying instances of tenured faculty being terminated because of curricular review when there are legitimate positions available within the institution for which the faculty are qualified and willing to serve.  Reassigning the affected tenured faculty to other positions within their institution is a guiding principle of American higher education, and has been a cornerstone of AAUP policy for 100 years.

    The committee is also studying the manner in which the curricular review process has been interpreted and administered across NSHE. There appears to be no uniformity of the process or of the intended results. On most campuses, curricular review has been a transparent process by which faculty and administrations sit and determine collaboratively how painful cuts to programs and departments are to be made. Other campuses enjoyed no such transparency or collaboration. NFA Legal Defense has responded to these complaints of inequity on several occasions.

    The collective bargaining agreement at Truckee Meadows Community College will be opened for renegotiation formally in March 2012. Faculty at several NSHE institutions are contemplating collective bargaining during this period. NFA as the legal bargaining agent will provide logistical support for the renegotiation and to other institutions that request assistance.

    The NFA legal defense committee is available for legal support to NFA members as recommended by their respective campus chapter committees. This process is outlined in the NFA legal defense policy, which can be found on our Legal Defense Services page.

Contact Us:

Office: 702-530-4NFA (4632)

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Address:

840 S. Rancho Drive

Suite 4-571

Las Vegas, NV 89106

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