Excerpts from the Dunlop Report

(Following are excerpts from the seventh and final chapter of the Report of the Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty.)

Titles, Salaries, and Benefits

The committee finds that the rank of instructor, for appointment with a Ph.D. degree, has largely been abandoned in other institutions and its retention is inimical to recruitment in this faculty. The rank of instructor should be eliminated as the initial rank for a teacher and scholar with the Ph.D. degree or its equivalent. The rank of assistant professor should be the initial title for such an appointment.

The rank of instructor should be retained for a few teaching appointments, greater in responsibility than normally associated with teaching fellows, in which the Ph.D. degree or its equivalent is expected to be completed during the course of the academic year. Their term should be no longer than a year. The appointment should carry less than a fulltime teaching load and compensation, the fraction to depend upon the extent of work remaining at the start of the term for the Ph.D. degree or its equivalent.

An appointment to the rank of assistant professor should be for a term of three or five years. The duration may be the same for all in the rank or variable among individuals as each department may decide. A three-year appointment may be extended, but reappointment should not exceed a total of five years in the rank.

The present rank of lecturer, for a term or without limit of time, for special situations should be continued.

The rank of associate professor should be made a three-year term appointment. The tenure of no present associate professor is to be adversely affected. Appointments to this rank should be limited to those who merit serious consideration for promotion to tenure, and a departmental recommendation to the rank should be required to provide evidence of such promise.

Professorial appointment should be without limit of time. Recommendations on tenure should be made by a department no later than the start of the third year of an associate professorship.

The Committee finds that the salary scale for non-tenure appointments is relatively low compared to other major institutions and it recommends the following new salary scale. The salary of the instructor should be computed on a full-time basis of $7,500. The salary schedule of the assistant professor should be $9,000 the first year with an increase of $500 each year to $11,000 in the fifth year. The salary of the three-year term associate professor should be $11,500 the first year, $12,000 the second, and $12,500 the third year. The starting professorial salary on the revised schedule should be $13,000.

The Committee finds that Harvard salaries at the professional level are under most competitive pressure in the ten to twenty years after the Ph.D. degree, earlier in the natural sciences and later in the humanities, and that upward adjustments are necessary to attract scholars in this age range to Harvard and to discourage their movement away from Harvard. While recognizing the undesirability of abandoning the traditional Harvard principle of relative uniformity of compensation within ranks, the Committee recommends that some greater degree of administrative flexibility be regarded as appropriate in individual cases.

A sum should be set aside in the budget of the faculty to provide some special leave in those areas and disciplines which do not have access to outside research funds and in which leave is decisive to research and writing at a particular stage in the career of a tenure member of the faculty. The University should make an effort in this way to redress in part the vast imbalance in the availability of outside research funds among fields.

The Committee believes it essential to establish an explicit priority order for financial claims on the limited resources of the faculty. Although there are many conflicting preferences within this faculty, the Committee ranks at the top of its priorities the improvement in the starting rate for new Ph.D.'s and selected increases in the salary of younger tenure members during the period of ten to twenty years after the doctorate.

The Recruitment Process

We conclude that the ad hoc committee system has on the whole served the faculty well in bringing independent judgment to bear on the process of recommendation for appointments without limit of time. Ad hoc committees have served a variety of functions beyond that of reviewing single recommendations. They have recommended one among a series of appointments proposed by a department; they have developed a list of possible appointments and ranked them; they have reviewed the desirability of a department entering a new specialty; and they have pointed out gaps and deficiencies in departments. The use of ad hoc committees should be continued.

The Committee recommends that greater use be made of more general ad hoc committees which might be convened periodically for a department, a group of departments, or related specialties in order to review policies and problems, discuss anticipated vacancies, canvass eligible candidates, and endorse a list of names for possible appointment. Such general ad hoc committees, not confined to the review of a single recommendation, could also elicit independent judgment about the needs of a whole area of knowledge, suggest expansion into areas in which talent is available, and recommend withdrawal from other areas. This procedure should reduce the total number of committees and provide advice which would ordinarily permit greater speed in extending a formal invitation.

The Committee is impressed not only with the need for independent judgment in the recruitment of faculty but also with the need for increased vigor and expedition in the operation of recruitment procedures. In particular, greater enterprise and initiative are required from departments and their chairmen. The day is past, if it ever existed, in which an invitation to Harvard was all that was required to bring a faculty member from another leading university. The growing number of scholars, specialties, universities, and research centers creates the need for widespread and systematic search for candidates for appointment.

We believe there are strong intellectual and scholarly reasons for having in the non-tenure ranks of a department young scholars who have taken their graduate training elsewhere. The recommendations of this Committee on titles and compensation should improve the opportunities in many departments for outside recruitment of assistant and associate professors.

The Committee is concerned by evidence of dissatisfaction among instructors and assistant professors in some departments. Some of these attitudes may be related to compensation and career prospects at Harvard. Some may arise from burdensome teaching assignments and inadequate research opportunities. A great deal appears to be related to status and relations with professors.

While this is not a new problem, the Committee recommends that each department review its practices as they affect this relationship. Teaching responsibilities, committee assignments, research opportunities, space allocations, closer relations with senior colleagues, and measures to assist placement no doubt all affect the atmosphere of a department and its attractiveness to young scholars.

The Committee also recommends that the Dean of the Faulty request particular departments to report to him the results of these reviews. The Houses and the research centers no doubt can also make a further contribution toward the development of a sense of the intellectual community of scholars of all ranks.

A distinguished department with a reputation for genuine concern with the scholarly growth and professional advancement of its non-tenure members is likely to serve as the most effective magnet for recruiting an outstanding junior faculty.

The Committee recommends that Harvard develop its Shady Hill property for faculty housing. A combination of apartments and town houses on this site would, in our view, be the best form of development.

Housing and Schooling

The Committee finds that the quality of the public schools in Cambridge has improved over the past thirty years, and the better elementary schools in Cambridge match those of the suburbs.

For reasons specified in Chapter VI, the Committee believes that it would not be feasible for the University to establish a school for faculty children.

The most serious problems respecting the education of faculty children, below the college level, appear to arise in the secondary school years. The Committee recommends that the interest-free loan program for undergraduate and graduate study of faculty children, regardless of their parents' domicile, be extended to educational expenses of the secondary school years with a corresponding increase in the maximum loan permitted. This arrangement would also facilitate a greater degree of freedom to faculty families in planning financing for the education of children.

The Committee recommends that the University, if invited, provide on released time a certain number of teachers and advisers in areas in which it may be difficult for Cambridge schools to recruit.

Educational Policy and Financial Constraints

We recommend that the Dean of the Faculty, with the assistance of appropriate staff and in cooperation with each department, gather on a continuing basis data on each department and its costs....

Periodically a report should be prepared on each department by the Dean, with the assistance of staff and the cooperation of the department, on the activities and performance of the department and associated costs....

There is also need for systematic review of those decisions with impacts across departmental lines, if not on the whole faculty....

In large departments, or in others facing complex questions, it is appropriate for the chairman of the department, with approval of the Dean, to be relieved of part of a full-time teaching load to permit greater attention to the management and administration of departmental affairs. Recruitment of faculty requires more time and deserves more attention than is usually devoted to it. Serious attention to the leadership and administration of departmental affairs may contribute significantly to the development and maintenance of departmental distinction.

The Dean of the Faculty will require additional assistance to carry out the recommendations of this report. For many years the responsibility and span of authority of the Dean have been very large and have been growing. This Committee has com-