Lecturer layoffs sacrifice education quality

Say goodbye to hopes of graduating soon and hello to additional quarters as an undergraduate and as a member of the unemployed community.

UCLA’s decision to lay off lecturers beginning at the end of June 2010 will not only affect lecturers who must now find new jobs but also students looking to graduate and pay off loans on time.

In addition to notifying campus lecturers of their termination, the letter of dismissal distributed to approximately 400 lecturers since this past July also informs of the possibility of suspending undergraduate requirements due to the budget cuts.

UCLA’s decision to lay off so many lecturers decreases the quality of education it has come to be known for, burdens students’ prospects for graduation, worsens the economic slump of unemployment and appears to advocate a profit-driven stance as lecturers are sacrificed and researchers are not.

According to Robert Samuels, the president of the University Council – American Federation of Teachers, there are more than 600 lecturers at UCLA and 67 continuing appointments who received layoff notices. Continuing appointments are those lecturers who have been approved after an evaluation of their teaching for at least six years.

The layoffs include “all of the continuing lecturers in the social sciences, most of the lecturers in the (UCLA) College, all of the writing program, most of the languages, all of communication, all of women’s studies and one from chemistry,” according to Samuels.

As for the remaining lecturers who have not reached the end of their six years, they can be released without the year warning that continuing appointments received.

Thus far, the 400 pink-slipped lecturers teach a total of 1,100 undergraduate courses, many of which are required for students who are looking to apply to graduate programs for English and medicine and recommended for those applying to law.

Without the writing and language programs, students from UCLA become less competitive than students from other universities as they fail to meet the standards set by graduate schools.

The fewer classes and the increase of students per class do not adequately prepare students for future academic or employment endeavors, discrediting the quality of education that UCLA has traditionally been praised for.

For instance, the curricula that instructors plan ahead of time are dramatically disturbed. As a student of the social sciences and humanities, I’m already in a 350-student political science class in which the large size makes it difficult for the professor to conduct discussion, provide quizzes that help students prepare for the midterm or final, or allow honors contracts.

Moreover, the smaller number of lecturers and classes, amplified by the threat of suspended undergraduate requirements, may result in students graduating later than expected. Not only does this push back their plans for attending graduate school or getting a jump start on a chosen career path, but students will be forced to take out more loans to pay for their longer stays at UCLA. Thus, students suffer both academically and financially as a result of fewer lecturers.

Although one solution proposed by the College board is to have students take required courses over the summer, Samuels said, “There has been no discussion of how these courses will be replaced or who will teach them.”

In addition to obvious criticism for the shortsightedness of the decision to produce layoffs without finalized solutions, this uncertainty raises questions of how the College even expects the summer courses to be taught and whether or not financial aid for summer classes will be distributed as it usually is.

While the more short-term consequences of the campus’s decision result in later graduation dates, the university’s layoffs threaten job prospects for graduate students and the lecturers who must find new positions in less than a year’s time.

“The position of lectureship is often provided as a way of transition to the job market for people who just received Ph.D.s,” said graduate student Kirk Sides, who is earning a doctorate in comparative literature. “To eliminate lectureships is to eliminate that source of transition.”

The underlying reality of the layoffs is that spaces that once would have been ready to receive graduate students will now force them into competition with a more experienced group of lecturers. Therefore, former lecturers and students will be competing with one another for work.

Another problem posed as a result of the layoffs is the distinction set between instructors who only lecture as opposed to professors who engage in research as well.

According to Samuels, while researchers have the option of attaining tenure at some point, lecturers are not provided with that option. Thus, lecturers become open targets in the midst of budget cuts because of the lack of protection they face.

That lecturers are less protected by tenure laws appears to give the notion that UCLA is only interested in hiring professors who can bring in money for the school through their research. Not only is this discriminatory against departments where research is more limited, but it also makes UCLA appear as though it is only in it for the money. That is, the benefits that students receive from quality lecturers are ignored because the lecturers aren’t making a direct profit for UCLA.

Students and instructors, a large part of what make UCLA a campus to boast about, can no longer function to maintain the reputation the campus has so painstakingly gained. Instead of simply feeling grateful to UCLA for enabling me to complete two majors in four years because of the various resources the school has traditionally provided, I feel lucky for having dodged a bullet that continuing students will now face.

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