The Teaching Fellows: Three Proposals

1. Increase salary.

2. Eliminate 'junior' pay scale on residence requirement.

3. Equitably define 'one-fifth' teaching time.

(Following are excerpts from a statement by the Executive Committee of the teaching Fellows Federation to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The statement was sent this week to Dean Ford and John P. Elder, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences -- Ed. Note).

One of the greatest obstacles to a clear examination of the place of teaching fellows at Harvard lies, as we are sure you are both aware, in the confusion of roles that our posiiton naturally encourages. Part-time teachers and part-time students, we have been labeled by a Crimson reporter as "latter-day Minotaurs." Probably we could find a more flattering description for the two lives that we lead; but however we choose to think of ourselves we are likely to continue to suffer from a certain confusion as to our role in the University.

While some take on two or three fifths of teaching, join the faculty at one of the houses or at Radcliffe, have lunch at the Faculty Club, talk about their students and teaching and settle down summer after summer to a little work on the old thesis, others think of themselves primarily as graduate students, take as little work as they can afford (hopefully two or three sections of the same course), fit in a little teaching between long days and nights in libraries and laboratories, pick up the Ph.D. in June and move on to jobs of $9000-10,000 a year; most of us, no doubt, chart a confusing course between these two full-time roles and somehow manage to work our way through graduate school in four, five, six, or seven years.

It was with this uncertainty about our double roles that a number of us began meeting this fall to look more closely into the position of teaching fellows at Harvard....

...From this initial look into the place of the teaching fellows in the University we came to two rather general conclusions, upon which, in the largest sense, our organization has been formed. First, few or none of us wished in any way to deny the value of the teaching fellow program at Harvard, either for Harvard College or for oureselves.... Even the large responsibilities which Harvard often placed upon the teaching fellows was felt to be a decidedly valuable part of the entire Harvard program, for it gave teaching fellows the freedom to develop more fully their own views of their material and their own methods of teaching.

At the same time we were convinced that there was far too little recognition within the University in general of the real place of importance that teaching fellows occupied. Although we too believed firmly in the educational value which our teaching had for us, we felt equally strongly that we were performing a real service to the University and that we should have the right, a right that had been recently reaffirmed for all college faculty by a presentation of the American Association of University Professors, to look into our own conditions of employment and present our requests for changes to the University. Although the Graduate Student Association had at times spoken for those among them who were teaching fellows, we believed that a separate organization to represent us exclusively in our capacity as teaching fellows was necessary; and it was with this in mind that the present Federation, an association of teaching fellows from the various departments in which they are appointed, was formed....

...Our petition, originally worked out in a general meeting of roughly 200 teaching fellows and subsequently endorsed, despite our primitive system of communications, by over five hundred teaching fellows, presents to you the improvements that over a majority of teaching fellows would like to see in the conditions of their employment.... We hope you will consider it, as well as the general position of teaching fellows at Harvard, carefully, and give us your own views in return.... We hope finally that you shall have opened the way to future cooperation and good will rather than dissension between the University and its lowest, but hardly insignificant rank of teachers.

Our first request is for an increase in salary from the present senior rate of $1200 for a fifth-time appointment: "That teaching fellows in the year beginning July 1, 1967 should not receive less than $1600 for a fifth-time teaching load." Perhaps we should say at the outset that such a request makes no sense unless we indicate what one-fifth of work amounts to. As we shall argue in more detail below in our request that a fifth-time teaching load should be equitably defined and administered throughout the University, we assume that a rating of one-fifth for a course indicates that the average teaching fellow in the course finds it necessary to spend a total of approximately eight hours per week during term-time in order to carry out all his teaching responsibilities satisfactorily.

Although we intend to draw comparisons between the rate of compensation for teaching fellows and that for other teachers both at Harvard and other institutions, for many of us the most immediate argument for an increase in compensation is the conviction that we are not receiving a reasonable living wage. Of course, an easy answer to this basic argument is that Harvard pays its teaching fellows far more than a miimum wage, in fact $6000 a year, for that is what a full-time appointment as a teaching fellow would pay at the senior rate.

Unfortunately, no teaching fellow can make this mythical sum. On the assumption that no graduate student can make satisfactory progress toward the degree if he teaches full time, teaching fellows are generally prevented by the Graduate School from working more than 3/5ths time; in fact, 2/5ths time, the ceiling which the Graduate School now intends to impose upon its Five Year Fellows during the years in which they must support themselves, has tended to be a practical limit for most teaching fellows who wish to get on with their graduate work.

The compensation for 2/5ths of teaching is presently $2400 for those on senior rate, a figure that is actually reduced to something less than $2300 after taxes. For those on junior rate the compensation for 2/5ths after taxes is less than $1700. Even at the higher rate teaching fellows' incomes fall considerably below the poverty line of $3000 often used as a rough standard for designating poor families in United States Government statistics. And whatever standard is applied, this is clearly a very small amount of income even for a single person.

.... We do not, however, suggest that teaching fellows' salaries themselves should vary according to need. As we shall argue again below, we do not believe that there are any grounds for paying different wages to these of roughly similar qualifications for the same services.

If one justification for our request for a higher rate of compensation is that, given the special circumstances under which teaching fellows must accept employment, they are not receiving a decent living wage, another is that teaching fellows' rate of compensation has not remained competitive with those of other teachers in Harvard College.

Our analysis of the historical relationship between instructors' and teaching fellows' compensation at Harvard indicates that teaching fellows' compensation has fallen to an historical low point in relation to that of instructors....

Of course it would be misleading not to mention that Harvard has during the same period in which it instituted the retirement benefits for instructors, also offered Staff Tuition scholarship aid exclusively to teaching fellows (though many other graduate students receive scholarship aid of other kinds which pays tuition). We should emphasize, however, that this scholarship aid, though a great booster to many teaching fellows who would otherwise sink deeply into debt in order to pay their term bills is not automatic was given in the past year to only 575 of 926 teaching fellows, does not bear any meaningful relation to the amount of the appointments and thus cannot actually be considered as compensation....

A more direct comparison may be made between the compensation of teaching fellows at Harvard and at other institutions. On the basis of a survey of thirty-four institutions carried out by Dean Elder and kind'y supplied to us, we calculate that the average full time rate for teaching fellows and assistants elsewhere is $5613. Harvard's senior rate, $6000, compares somewhat favorably with this average: twelve universities paid more, eighteen less. Harvard's junior rate. $4400, compares far less favorably: twenty-two paid more, eight less.... For senior faculty salaries Harvard in fact ranked first of all these schools in average compensation and surpassed the general average for the thirty-four schools by a large margin: $17600 average for Harvard as compared with an average of $13,040 for the other schools....

Along with these justifications for our request for an increased rate of compensation, we should at least make some attempt to answer beforehand the most obvious objection that can be made to any such request: That Harvard simply cannot afford it.

In answer we will not attempt here an amateur joy ride through the financial maze of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' budget nor will we preach a sermon over Harvard's fabled untouched riches. Undoubtedly, though surpluses may turn up in some years and deficits in others, the budget of the Faculty will, when completed, generally show in any year little room for any major new expenditures. What we wish to emphasize instead is the obvious: That all budgets are founded upon a judgement of relative priorities, and that our petition essentially asks Harvard to reconsider her present priorities in the light of our claims. Because teaching fellows occupy a place of importance in the total program of undergraduate teaching at Harvard College, because their need for a decent living naturally commands attention and because in the matter of teaching fellows' salaries Harvard has fallen below the place of high distinction which she occupies in most of her undertakings, we believe that our request for an increase in salary deserves consideration on an equal basis with most of the other programs of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. For the same reasons we believe that we may in addition ask the Faculty to reconsider its priorities in the light of our request.

Our second request is that the present junior rate of compensation be eliminated. Under the present system, teaching fellows are divided for purposes of salary into two groups: Those who have fulfilled their residence requirements, who are paid at the senior rate, $1200 per fifth, and those who have not fulfilled these requirements, paid at the junior rate of $880 per fifth. Several arguments can be advanced to support our request. First, there exists no evident relationship between the fulfillment or nonfulfillment of residence re-