Terminal degrees offer faculty more benefits

Faculty that lack a terminal degree at Georgia College & State University face a tough road when it comes to promotion, pay and tenure.

Not all doctors are professors and not all faculties are doctors, said Dean of School of Liberal Arts & Sciences Beth Rushing. Doctorates are common, but not a necessity to teach at Georgia institutions.

“In general, we require a terminal degree,” said Rushing. “That can vary. It’s not always a doctorate. In some areas, a terminal degree is a Masters in Fine Arts. So we have some faculty that we consider to have the terminal degree even though they don’t have their doctorate.”

Of the 268 instructional faculty at GC&SU, 206 have terminal degrees. That is 77 percent of instructional faculty.

Some majors, though, do not require teachers to have a terminal degree. Most often in these areas experience in the field can count as much as a terminal degree.

“For example, in nursing and in mass comm as well there are people who have not achieved the level of a terminal degree, but it’s so difficult to find that right match of practice and post graduate education,” said Vice President and Dean of Faculties Anne Gormly.

Coordinator of the Mass Communication Program Mary Jean Land agrees that teachers who have practical experience can be more qualified.

“If I have to choose between somebody with a masters and five to 10 years experience and somebody fresh out of a Ph.D. program with no experience, I’m going to choose the person with experience,” said Land.

That is not to say that there are not differences for those with and without terminal degrees. A terminal degree can directly affect a teacher’s rank on the promotional ladder and his or her pay.

“Everybody with a terminal degree starts as an assistant professor and you spend a minimum of five years as an assistant professor,” said Rushing. “Then they apply for tenure and promotion to associate and then spend a minimum of five years as an associate professor before (they) can apply for promotion to a full professor.”

The same basic principles apply to those without a terminal degree until the highest rank of professor. The Board of Regents policy states that a teacher without a terminal degree can never become a full professor.

According to the Board of Regents’ Web site, the pay difference from associate professor and full professor is substantial. As of December 2000, a full professor earned on average $61,667 at GC&SU while an associate professor earned only $49,962. Those numbers can also depend on what discipline a teacher instructs in.

“Nursing faculty with a master’s in nursing make much more than a faculty member with a Ph.D. in English because the market is so tight in nursing,” said Gormly.

Some national rankings of universities take into account the number of faculty with Ph.D.s and Assistant Professor of Government and Sociology Chris Grant thinks that is not necessarily the best policy.

“One of the anomalies of higher education is that one of the ways you rank a university is by how many Ph.D.s you have teaching classes, but that really isn’t necessarily a measure of quality in subject matter or quality in areas of expertise,” Grant said.

As of 2000, 70 percent of GC&SU’s faculty had a doctorate; for comparison, 85.8 percent of the University of Georgia’s faculty have doctorates, according to the Board of Regents.

Gormly and Rushing concede that students don’t always recognize the difference between doctors and other faculty.

“My guess is that they are responding more to the confidence level,” Gormly said.

Another restriction placed on teachers without a terminal degree is the level of classes that can be taught.

“The concept here is that you’re beyond the level that you’re teaching,” said Gormly. “You couldn’t have a baccalaureate teaching at a baccalaureate program. Likewise a terminal degree is a requirement for teaching in a graduate program.”

This guideline is in conjuncture with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ policy. Without accreditation by SACS, schools do not receive financial aid.

Having a terminal degree, however, does not have a direct effect on other issues such as tenure. Tenure is not a lifetime pledge and that sometimes gets misunderstood, said Gormly. Instead, it is a promise that a teacher cannot be removed from his or her position without cause.

“One of the most important things about tenure is that it protects academic freedom,” said Rushing. “It allows people to sometimes do research and teach in things that might not be popular. That’s good for the state of knowledge.”

Another common misconception that both Gormly and Rushing want to dispel is that tenure is just given out. Instead, it is a status that must be earned. When a teacher applies for tenure and promotion, he or she submits a thick portfolio of work. These portfolios include student opinion surveys, syllabi, exams, links to Web pages, and an essay on how that person teaches.

“You have to be a good teacher to be promoted and tenured,” said Rushing. “In the School of Arts and Sciences, that is at least half of what the decision is based on. The second criterion is scholarly or creative activities. In arts and sciences, we have a wide range, from an article in a journal or book to a musical performance or an art exhibit. A third criterion that is also very important is service to the institution and to the community.”

Still, this perk for those without a terminal degree is slowly being taken away. “People can get tenured without a terminal degree, but that’s becoming less and less common,” Gormly said.

For those teachers who do not begin teaching with a terminal degree there are options. The University System of Georgia offers several programs for teachers to achieve higher learning. These programs include a tuition remission program where after working in the system for a set time, university teachers and even staff members can have tuition paid for. Faculty Development in Georgia is another program that helps faculty earn terminal degrees. This program allows teachers up to two years off to focus on earning a doctorate.

One prominent member of GC&SU’s faculty that took part in the FDIG program is Land.

“I think the university did me a great service by allowing me that opportunity and I think that it is something that any faculty member should take advantage of,” said Land.

Land began teaching at GC&SU in 1983 when mass communication was just a minor. She left the school for two years to receive her doctorate and thinks that the experience greatly improved her ability to teach and lead in a university atmosphere.

“Not just my teaching, but my understanding of the whole picture,” said Land. “I also took some courses in higher education so obviously I gained a better understanding of how the university works. But certainly my teaching improved.”

Another GC&SU faculty member that earned a doctoral degree while continuing to teach is Grant. Unlike Land though, Grant does not think that his degree greatly improved his teaching abilities.

“It always adds on to time because when you’re trying to do doctoral research it is really a full time job and teaching is also a full time job,” said Grant. “The latter part of finishing a Ph.D., in most disciplines, is research. That research rarely has direct application on courses you teach as a young faculty member. So I think that it slowed me down on finishing my Ph.D. more than it affected the class quality.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 8 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry