Communicate with the Senate
At the request of the Administration the Committee on Administration and Budget (CAB) has examined the administration's proposals to return tuition money to units at the School level on a Student Semester Hour (SSH) basis. The overall purpose of the administration's proposed SSH scheme is to reward units in proportion to their teaching loads and to foster an element of competition into attracting and teaching undergraduates. CAB has developed a set of credit-hour weighting factors to facilitate the implementation of this policy. The factors proposed by CAB are intended to moderate anticipated undesirable side-effects of this policy that might lead to a deterioration in the quality of education provided to the students at UH Manoa,
It is proposed that the return of tuition money to units be based on Student Semester Hours that are obtained from enrolment and credit-hours that have been weighted for a variety of factors. It is important that after its implementation the policy be reviewed regularly to ensure that the proposed scheme is meeting its goals and not leading to unanticipated negative consequences,
The credit-hour weighting factors are constructed to ensure that there remains a balanced offering of diverse courses taught by experienced faculty.
The weighting factors are based on existing average enrolments and use of TAs and are designed to:
Prevent the elimination of low enrolment classes at upper and graduate division levels
Encourage the provision of writing intensive courses at both lower and upper division levels
Account for the use of TAs in laboratory classes
Encourage the use of faculty at all ranks in the teaching process
The credit-hour value for any course will be obtained by summing all relevant parameters in the formula below and then multiplying by the number of contact hours.
Credit hour value = Class Type + Special Class addition (Writing Intensive or Laboratory + Instructor Rank
For any given course the SSH will be determined by the student enrolment multiplied by the calculated credit-hour value.
The dollar value of a SSH will be determined annually by dividing the total available tuition revenues by the total number of SSHs.
After implementation the system should undergo an in-depth evaluation by Faculty appointed by the Faculty Senate to monitor progress and identify and eliminate any adverse unforeseen consequences.
Table 1 Proposed credit-hour values for Class Types and
additions for Special Classes
Division Class Writing Intensive Laboratory
Lower 1.0 0.5 0.25
Upper 1.5 0.5 0.5
Graduate 3.0 na 0.5
Table 2. Proposed credit-hour values for Lecturer Rank
Lecturer Rank Credit Hour addition
2 0
3 0.25
4 0.5
5 0.75
e.g. lower division WI class taught by Rank 2
Credit-hour = 1.0 +0.5+ 0 = 1.5
Upper division class taught by Rank 5
Credit-hour = 1.5 + 0 + 0.75 = 2.25
Table 3. Proposed credit hour values for non-instructional
classes
Course number Credit-hour value
499 3
699/700 3
799/800 5
Note: There is no instructor weighting added to the classes in Table 3.
Credit-hour logic
Class division:
Weighting is based on average enrolments, 30 for lower division, 20 for upper division and 10 for graduate classes. The weighting factor is intended to prevent the elimination of small upper level classes.
Writing Intensive:
A credit-hour adjustment of 0.5 is added to lower division classes to reflect the capped enrolment of a WI class (20), the same adjustment is made to the upper division to ensure that WI classes are offered at this level. There are no Graduate level WI classes therefore no weighting.
Laboratory classes:
Assuming a Teaching Assistant's (TA) salary is ~ 25% of a faculty salary a credit-hour adjustment of +0.25 is added to reflect the need for a TA for each ~40 students in lower division laboratories and +0.5 to reflect one TA for each 20 students in upper division and graduate laboratory classes
Instructor correction:
This weighting is to encourage units to use experienced instructors to teach classes and reward them accordingly. It is incorporated to minimize the attraction to use cheaper, inexperienced instructors to teach classes.
The value of the addition made is according to the rank (or average rank) of the instructor(s) teaching the class.
The weighting of +0, +0.25, +0.5 and +0.75 reflect the increase in the salaries (and hence the cost to the units of those faculty) between the ranks.
Monitoring
It is important that implementation of the tuition reimbursement scheme be monitored closely to determine that it is achieving its goals and that unforeseen negative feedbacks have not developed.
In order to achieve this it is recommended that the Administration in collaboration with the Faculty Senate appoint a committee of oversight composed of faculty and administrators to evaluate and deal with ongoing problems of implementation and make recommendations for future modifications and oversight. It is expected that this committee will want to pay particular attention to the following factors:
Availability of classrooms of appropriate size,
Availability of specialized equipment in classrooms
Changes in grade distributions
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