The survey examines “engagement” in significant facets of university life: time spent in preparing for class, extracurricular activity and for purposes here “quality of relationship with faculty” (helpfulness and availability).

My analysis of the data indicates that the only institutions to score as low as UW Madison in the “quality of relationship with faculty” category were Cal State Poly, Howard Univ and NJ Inst. of Technology. Others in the low quintile were largely state university flagships: Univ. Minnesota, Twin Cities, Ann Arbor, UF Gainesville, U Mass, Amherst. All pretty bad but not quite as low as our score.

The second issue — which deserves more analysis than I have time for –  are the scores for students response as to whether would they enroll in the school again – definitely or probably. This is where it gets interesting.

It appears from just eyeballing the data that there is a negative correlation between quality of faculty contact and their perspective that they would “definitely” enroll again (would the customer buy the product or recommend it to a friend). Not only were “we” in the highest quintile of student satisfaction but we were again joined by our large state campuses: Florida, Ann Arbor, U Va, Minnesota- Twin Cities had scores as high or higher than UW. A few exceptions to be sure, but the association of low “quality of relationship” and high satisfaction was pretty stark.

I’m sure there are additional factors in the National Survey but the data given in the NYT on line was pretty amazing if for no other reason than as an example of a spurious association.

-DA

DISCLAIMER:  The letter from L&S (and therefore this post) is intended strictly as a convenient guide to the contract changes and presumably has no binding authority.  Please refer to the actual collective bargaining agreement for authoritative information. Sifting and Winnowing is not responsible for any inaccuracies or omissions either in the original letter from L&S or in our reproduction of that letter.

Summary of Changes in the 2007-09 to TA Contract

Wages, Benefits and other Cost Items

Article X, Section 1:    Wage Adjustments

• General Wage Adjustments:
  • Year 1:      2%
  • Year 2:     1% effective Semester I; 2% effective nearest pay period to 6/7/09

Paid as lump sum (minus the amount of increased health insurance premiums owed by employees) to all bargaining unit members (except hourly PAs and Reader/Graders) in pay status on April, 2009 payroll. The amount is $623.62 Note: the amount will be reduced by the amount of

• $95 lump sum to all TAs and PAs (including hourly PAs, excluding Readers/Graders) in pay status on the April 2009 payroll. This represents the 08-09 cost to the university if we had eliminated the lowest TA level beginning Semester I of 08-09.

• This is not in the Wage Adjustments document, but has been agreed to by OSER, UW and the TAA.

• • TAs and PAs on the October, 2009 payroll will receive retroactive pay as if the new rates were in effect on July 1, 2009 for PAs (all of whom are A-basis) and on August 24, 2009 for TAs (all of whom are C-basis).  This pay is though the October payroll month. The difference in the monthly employee health insurance premiums will be deducted from the pay for that period.

• • TAs and PAs will be paid the new rates on the regular payroll cycles beginning with the November payroll month.

This table shows the anticipated pay dates for all of the wage adjustments.

Article X, Section 2:  Experience/Training Levels

• Allows K-8 teaching experience to count as experience.

• Eliminates language requiring diversity issues training to qualify for the experienced rate.  Instead requires completion of the diversity issues training in order to be reappointed for more than one semester.

• Eliminates the “Regular TA” level beginning 09-10; changes the name of the “Experienced TA” to “Standard TA.”  There are now only two levels of TA.

2008-09 Titles and Rates – to be used until the 2009-10 contract is negotiated

Article XI, Section 1:            Health Insurance

• Increases TA/PA health insurance monthly premiums for Tier 1 plans by $2 for Single and $5 for family coverage beginning January, 2009

Negotiating Note #3:            Child Care

• Increases the Employer’s 2007-09 set aside for TA/PA child care expense assistance from $150,000 to $157,500.

LANGUAGE

Article II, Section 11:            Union Orientation

• We agreed on include TAA membership card with “Membership information” already provided to new TAs and PAs.
• We added language stating that departments may agree to allow the TAA at least 15 minutes to make a presentation at orientation sessions.

Article V, Section 6:            Appointments

• We agreed on requiring open PA appointments to be posted on the web (Student Job Center) unless the position is reserved for guarantees of support or recruiting offers, reappointments or those that have to be filled within 7 days for emergency purposes.

Article V, Section 9:            Work Surroundings

• We agreed on providing an internet accessible computer with printing capability when it is determined by the employer to be necessary for performing assigned duties.

Article VI, Section 1:            Orientation and Training

• We changed EDRC to OED
• We agreed to add language that allows OED to approve alternative diversity workshops to the standards workshops.

Article VII, Section 1:                        Discrimination

• We agreed on adding language to cover gender identification and expression as a protected status.
• We agreed on adding language stating that employees should not be subjected to “discriminatory behavior that precludes, distracts or otherwise encumbers the employee from performing the duties of his or her job.”

Article VIII, Section 13:            Lactation Rooms

• We agreed on language requiring the employer to have at least three lactation rooms on campus; the employer needs to consult with the Campus Childcare Committee on the location of and specifications for such rooms.

NOTE: UW-Madison currently has 7 lactation rooms on campus.

• We agreed on minimum standards for at least three of the lactation rooms:
  • is at least 70 sq ft
  • cannot be a bathroom
  • has a curtain or door for privacy
  • has accessible electrical outlets
  • has a couch or chair
  • has a trash can
  • has a table or counter space
  • is on the same floor as a bathroom
  • has two pro-lactation posters, and
  • has a means of indicating that the room is occupied or vacant.

NOTE: UW-Madison currently has three rooms that need only the posters to meet these standards.

Article XI, Section 5:            Sick Leave Credit Bank

• Allows sick leave to be used in increments of ½ days instead of the previous one full day.  This will increase the effective amount of sick leave available.

Memo from UW to TAA re:             Catastrophic Leave

• We agreed on this memo to document options available to a TA or PA with a catastrophic illness during the semester.  It does not create any new benefits or practices.  It covers three areas of concern.

• • Impact on employee’s stipend
  • Impact on tuition remission
  • Impact on health insurance coverage

Negotiating Note #9:            PA Academic Basis Appointments

• Creates a C-basis PA appointment in addition to A-basis appointments; requested by UW.

Note:  Current PAs should not be converted to C basis until July 1, 2010 or later.  New PA appointments may be made on a C-basis immediately.

OHR         11/4/09

When it comes to both the availability and the pricing of a product, the Law of Supply and Demand works best (from the customer’s perspective) when (a) those creating the demand are also the ones paying the price, (b) when the demand is elastic — that is, when an unreasonable increase in price leads to a sharp drop in demand and thus in the supplier’s profits, and (c) the profit potential is sufficient to motivate a supplier to provide, or continue providing, an essential product or service even when the market is small.

With textbooks, the demand is created by instructors who assign the reading for a class of anywhere between 10 and 400 students. But it is the students who pay. The demand is rigid – most instructors don’t assign the textbook based on price but rather based on pedagogical suitability for their course, and students have to buy it. And for many advanced courses, there may be only one suitable textbook on the market. So that textbook, within its particular narrow niche, enjoys no less of a de facto monopoly than Microsoft enjoys in the computer world.

To illustrate my point, let’s take J.D. Jackson’s Classical Electrodynamics. It has been around for 45 years (it is now in its third edition). It is one of the most widely used advanced physics textbooks ever and has undoubtedly sold many tens of thousands of copies, if not more.

The list price for Jackson is $96, and the current discounted price from Amazon is $76. Even used copies are selling for upwards of $56, and this despite an ample supply, as there are currently 75 used copies available via Amazon!

Now compare Classical Electrodynamics, with its 808 pages and current rank of around #13,000 in Amazon sales, with W.L. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, with its 1,264 pages and sales rank of around #15,000. Jackson was first published in 1962; Shirer in 1960. In short, comparable age, comparable sales in recent years, and Shirer has 50% more pages to boot.

The list price of Rise and Fall is $25.00; the Amazon discount price is $16.50.

How do we explain the fact that Jackson is four times as expensive as Shirer?

It’s not marketing cost. Every physics professor in the world already knows Jackson. I’m not a physics professor and even I know about it! Presumably, just about every physics professor has already made up their mind whether Jackson is the textbook of choice for their course.

Even if Jackson were still being actively marketed today (which I doubt), instructors are vastly less expensive to identify and reach than the general public. All you have to do is send them a free examination copy. If an instructor likes it and adopts it for their course, voila! You’ve got dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of guaranteed sales over the next few years.

It’s not distribution cost, which should be about the same regardless of the subject matter. And it’s not author royalties — in neither case, in fact, is it likely that the author royalties account for more than 10-20% of gross receipts. It’s not layout, design, and typesetting costs — these are one-time expenses that were probably recouped within the first year of printing.

What about paper, printing, and binding cost? Contrary to common perception, retail prices for books have almost nothing to do with their manufacturing cost. When many thousands of copies per year are being sold, the printing/binding cost of even the fanciest color textbook with accompanying CD is almost certainly well under $10 per copy. For a simpler, text-only paperback of the type frequently used in language and literature courses, the manufacturing cost is probably closer to $2 per copy. Hardcover binding is perhaps a dollar more — that’s right, a dollar!

Most likely, there are two factors at work here: (a) perceived value — a hardcover book with lots of complicated equations looks more expensive than a softcover with just text and a few photos; and (b) the fact that Jackson is usually purchased by students who have no choice.

My point is this: the prices for many, if not most, textbooks are artificially inflated relative to other books, sometimes by ridiculous amounts. Publishers charge a lot simply because they can. Most instructors either don’t consider price when assigning a textbook or else don’t feel they have acceptable lower-cost alternatives to choose from.

In order to control textbook costs, which are now a major factor in the rising cost of a college education, the academic community needs to figure out the following:

1) How to give instructors a reasonable incentive to factor cost into their textbook decisions without penalizing them for sound pedagogical choices; and

2) How to effectively exert pressure on publishers to hold down prices despite the shortcircuiting of traditional market forces.

I don’t claim to have the solution. But awareness of the problem may be an important first step.

It is worth mentioning in passing, however, that instructors may have more leverage with publishers than they realize. One publisher sales rep once worked hard to persuade me to adopt a popular $60 textbook for a freshman course with a projected enrollment of 350. I said I would consider it if she would make it available through the University Bookstore at 20% off the retail price. To my surprise, she agreed! (To her surprise, I still didn’t adopt the book.)

Incidentally, an analogous distortion of market forces is at work with library journal subscriptions, whose cost has far outstripped inflation in recent decades. But that is a topic is for another day.

-G