Before addressing the student body last night, Chancellor John Silber addressed a meeting of the Faculty Assembly. While he discussed Boston University faculty and buildings at both events, his messages did not seem consistent. Quality faculty and buildings are both important, but BU must decide on its priorities and then communicate them with the BU community.
At the Faculty Assembly, Silber said the current salary freezes and planned job cuts stem from a desire to ensure the university has enough money for constructing facilities and hiring famous faculty. However, at the student forum, Silber said quality education can occur in run-down buildings and stressed the quality of BU’s faculty to prove why it deserves a high reputation.
In addition to these seemingly divergent views, the administration has maintained that the tuition-fueled budget for faculty and education expenses is entirely separate from the endowment and grant-fueled building fund. Blurring these two budgets and the school’s priorities only confuses the BU community.
Comfortable buildings are important because they help recruit employees and students, increase BU’s reputation and can improve learning conditions. The College of Fine Arts desperately needs renovation because of its poor impression on applicants and harmful effects on instruments sensitive to temperature. However, the rest of the campus has decent facilities, and Silber correctly said that quality learning takes place in them almost all of the time.
Therefore, attracting and retaining quality faculty should be BU’s higher priority, and the university has had great success with this. However, salary freezes will jeopardize retention if they continue much longer and should not happen just to increase the physical plant. Silber cited that 75 percent of classes have less than 20 students in regard to an ‘overabundance’ of faculty. But maintaining a low student-to-faculty ratio should be one of BU’s goals and benefits education. BU has done a commendable job of realizing that introductory classes can and should have hundreds of students while writing classes and more discussion-based seminars work better with about 20, and this common sense needs to continue.
Along with keeping the ratio low in an intelligent manner, the university must focus on its lesser-known faculty. Having Elie Wiesel and Saul Bellow as professors attracts students and boosts BU’s reputation, but few students can actually take their classes. Most of our faculty members are not well known outside of BU but are excellent teachers, and their students benefit.
BU must keep its quality professors around, and continuing salary freezes much longer will not ensure that. The best thing the university can do to retain professors is to get to know them and listen to their concerns. They know best how many students should be in their classes for them to work effectively and certainly have suggestions for the administration that cannot be ignored. The administration must listen to its faculty because they have much more to say and more effect on education than its buildings.