How to Talk to Your Kids Junior Faculty About Money
Dan’s post about Florida’s higher education budget crunch from two weeks ago made me kind of sad. It reflects well on Dan that he is thinking creatively about ways to continue to provide FSU’s students with high quality legal education at a time when money is tight. What made me sad was the thought that, with all the other things junior faculty have to worry about, money had to be added to the list.
I think it’s important for administrators to present budget issues to junior faculty members carefully, for a number of reasons.
One of the downsides of “juniority” is that new faculty, unlike their more senior colleagues, probably don’t (at least early on) appreciate that law school budgets (except at the top private schools) are cyclical in nature. Sometimes budget booms and busts are driven by enrollment figures, other times by state revenues. During the course of an academic career, professors will see both “good” times and “bad.” (One would hope that a clever administration would exercise some restraint during good times to pave the way for sustained efforts during the bad, but academia may not be structured with those incentives in mind).
A budget crunch shouldn’t be presented in sky-is-falling terms. Not only are junior faculty ill-equipped to understand the ebb and flow of budgets, but they may also fear for their own job security even though such fears are probably irrational so long as they continue to progress toward tenure. But even irrational fear can be stressful, and stress is something that junior faculty have enough of as it is.
Moreover, when administrators start talking about belt-tightening, junior faculty may start to fear asking for research and travel support. More senior colleagues may know that creative administrations can and will find ways to support important work and meaningful opportunities even when budgets are strained. Junior faculty may not have the experience to know this or the confidence to ask for something extra. Yet many schools can get a comparatively greater bang-for-their-buck by supporting junior faculty research and conference attendance.
A lot of the advice out there on how to talk to kids about money makes some sense in this context as well. Of course, I’m not arguing for dishonesty or secrecy about budgets when it comes to junior professors. I’m not arguing for closed meetings, in which only senior faculty get to hear about budget dilemmas. But when talking about money problems with junior faculty, I would hope that law school leaders would follow advice like this and this: 1. Approach the discussion with a positive attitude; 2. Set a tone of confidence, openness, and trust; 3. Make sure junior faculty can always approach you with questions or concerns about budgets; 4. Avoid catastrophic “what if” scenarios.
Posted by Geoffrey Rapp on September 5, 2007 at 11:36 AM
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