Professors Not Satisfied With Duties, Poll Shows

Half of the University's teaching staff is dissatisfied with present working conditions, a Harvard Teachers Union poll, results of which are in the mails today, shows.

With a total of 266, or one out of every three faculty members polled, the faction of discontent took its highest toll among full professors, two-thirds of whom claimed imbalance of their various activities.

On the reason for this imbalance, almost all these polled, from professors to teaching fellows, agreed that the University staff is too small to serve adequately the swollen, post-war student body.

Lack of Work Standard

The other major reason for dissatisfaction, the Teachers Union study indicates, is the utter lack of any quantitative work standard. While the faculty member's work week averaged 50 hours, with instructors' estimates of over 58 hours bolstering this figure, over 40 percent could not answer the question of what is considered full-time work in their department.

The confusion on this time question is accentuated, the report states, by the fact that the answers of the remaining 60 percent ranged from "the hours of the day minus that which is required for eating, sleeping, and traveling" to "what you can get away with if you want to try."

Two Proposals

Noting the faculty's concurrence on the sore spots of too many students and too little definition of the job required, the Teachers Union concludes its report with two proposals:

(1) That the administration re-establish the pre-war faculty student ration during this transition period, and

(2) That a faculty committee delve into the workload problem with an eye toward setting up a standard defining the normal work-load for each staff rank.

"Too Much Teaching"

Most surprising to observers was the fact that 46 percent of the dissatisfied laid the blame directly in front of "too much teaching or grading," for, as the Teachers Union report points out, "only about 15 percent of a Harvard 'teacher's' working time is spent inside the classroom."

In explanation of this curiosity, the bulletin reminds readers that "the primary rewards of academic life are contingent upon reseach activities and not upon teaching."

The Teachers Union is headed by Perry Miller, Professor of American Literature.