OHIO BOARD OF REGENTS

Opening

Don Langford remarked that three major constituencies are directly influencing the pilot project discussions, each offering its own important contribution:

1. College and university representatives remind us that there are costs and human resources associated with managing data, and those costs need to be considered throughout the development of the information system. In addition, they advise on campus data needs for various analyses such as workload and cost allocations.
2. The Faculty Advisory Committee to the Chancellor reminds us that faculty contributions include more than their instructional mission, and that there is more to their instructional mission than time spent in the classroom.
3. The Board of Regents reminds us of the need to recognize the State's responsibility to be accountable in its distribution of state funds to colleges and universities.

Langford noted that colleges and universities which agree to participate in the data submission portion of the pilot project will each receive $5,000.

Statewide Faculty Sample Survey

Langford distributed notes of his meeting with Paul Lavrakas, Director of Research Services at Ohio State University. The statewide faculty sample survey will be a large undertaking, requiring the coordination and expertise of several research centers during the development stages. Lavrakas indicated that a year should be devoted to the pilot of the sample survey.

Daryl Wright indicated that there has been a long-standing desire to stop the FSR-style (Faculty Service Report) universal self reporting of time spent by faculty, noting that the cost is high and the reliability is low in the FSR approach. He added that a state-administered sample survey would move the cost more centrally to the state level.

Wright announced that HEI faculty data don't need to provide the detailed basis from which compliance with Faculty Workload Guidelines will be determined. The sample survey will provide a good description across the state of sector and discipline differentiation of how faculty spend their time. [Note: Although people will clearly look to the data in HEI as they try to understand faculty activity in general and instructional workloads in particular, the data in HEI will not provide detailed information about time spent outside of class by every faculty member and hence may not be able to answer every question that one might have about faculty work or compliance with the faculty workload policy. However, it will say quite a bit, especially about the courseload assigned to faculty.]

Research Activity

Sponsored research activity currently reported through Research Incentive at the Board of Regents will be studied further, examining ways for possibly integrating it more directly into the HEI system. Besides continuing to collect data on sponsored research through direct reporting, the Regents will collect information on departmental research through the sample survey. The issue of research activity will be on the pilot project's January agenda.

Bureau of Employment Services Update

Andy Lechler and Langford discussed the meeting they had with the Bureau of Employment Services last week, considering the possibilities of consolidating data from payroll files submitted by colleges and universities to the Bureau of Employment Services (OBES) and the Department of Administrative Services (DAS). This would enable the Regents to prepare salary statistics about all staff-not just faculty-and to produce employment reports that are the functional equivalent to Table 1 of the Basic Data Series.

Lechler and Langford described the following difficulties of coordinating a data collection with OBES:

• "Work Category" would need to be added to an input file containing some items used by OBES, but not needed by Regents
• data would need to be collected from universities and colleges on a monthly basis (to comply with OBES reporting needs), even though term-by-term or annual reporting would be sufficient for Regents
• the number of weeks worked in a quarter would be difficult to calculate for employees (needed in OBES' Employer's Report of Wages)

Data Collection Issues

Wright defended a unit record collection of data about non-faculty employees, stating that there is a need at the state level to understand employment, generally, on campuses--not only faculty employment. There were suggestions that the federal classification of work categories could be the basis for Regents' collection of employee data. Wright pointed out that Regents has a need to describe employment on campuses in the state, and in addition to any financial description, there would be a need to know the number of employees on campuses.

Lechler offered a financial alternative concerning non-faculty employees: collecting aggregated cost data for the categories rather than the number of employees; using dollars as the metric rather than FTE. Participants expressed interest in such an approach. Lechler pointed out that financial data are currently aggregated, and such an approach would be consistent with other data collection in the Financial Data Area.

There was discussion of the importance of knowing the current classification categories used by college and university payroll systems. While the federal classification system defines discrete categories, there was concern that student workers are not included in the current classification structure. Participants supported a suggestion to adopt the IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) list of categories and definitions as much as possible, adding students as a category, and using unit record collection rather than aggregated data. The following categories are currently used in IPEDS reporting to provide an annual snapshot on October 1:

Administrative, Managerial, Executive
Faculty (Instruction/Research/Public Service)
Instruction/Research Assistants (part time)
Other Professionals (Support/Service)
Technical and Paraprofessionals
Clerical and Secretarial
Skilled Crafts
Service/Maintenance

Gross Pay and Contract Salary

Discussion led to a suggestion to use contract salary for the annual snapshot of all employees (faculty and non-faculty), while using gross pay in the Faculty Employment (FE) file.

Resource Analysis would create an index using faculty salaries in order to allocate costs to subject codes and levels of instruction offered by funding units. Lechler stated that if there is no need to link a faculty member's salary with Schedule 5, then there's no need to have a funding unit, because Resource Analysis will allocate out of Schedule 5 anyway.

A participant noted that the Ohio Civil Service Commission Report provides a snapshot at the end of the year (June), using the same data elements as IPEDS.

File Structure

After some discussion about the possibility of merging the faculty and non-faculty employment files-since it was felt to be no longer necessary to maintain a link with OBES files-the pilot project recommended continuing with two files: a faculty employment file containing the detailed data elements needed for Resource Analysis and instructional delivery, and an employment file (for all employees) which would provide an IPEDS-style snapshot using fewer data elements than the Faculty Employment file. A unit record dataset that follows the guidelines of the IPEDS report would be able to produce the same results as in IPEDS reporting.

In reporting "Contract Salary," it was suggested that the length of contract also be included, reflecting nine-month, 12-month, and full time/part time contracts.

A pilot project participant pointed out that since the policy related to the input files is about who is providing the instruction, the emphasis should be on the delivery of instruction rather than on workload, which tends to place an emphasis on determining whether everyone is doing his or her fair share. The Faculty Employment (FE) file and Faculty Course Sections Taught (ST) file contribute to a description of the instructional process while the faculty sample survey would describe the non-instructional activity in addition to information about instructional activity, including how much time faculty are in contact with students.

With the emphasis placed on instructional delivery rather than instructional workload, it was suggested that faculty could be grouped by the subject codes of the courses they teach. There was general approval of linking faculty to subject fields derived from the subject codes, recognizing that such an approach de-emphasizes the traditional view of department-based faculty. The aggregation to subject field would be independent of organizational habits and wouldn't require an additional data collection, since the subject fields would be derived from the subject codes of the course sections.

There was a question about whether changes and modifications have been proposed for Schedule 5 so that it correlates to subject codes rather than to funding units. Lechler pointed out that there has been a proposal in Resource Analysis to change from the Program Code to institutions' taxonomies as a convenience to colleges and universities.

In response to a question about whether for each faculty member there should be a record of the department to which that faculty member is assigned, several participants indicated that it would not be necessary. One participant referred to a general move on campuses to associate faculty with broader categories that transcend individual departments. It was suggested that pilot project participants ask their provosts if they're comfortable with the idea of no longer reporting information linking faculty to a specific assigned department. [Note: The identification of departments is important because Regents faculty workload policies apply to departments rather than to individuals.]

The metrics that could be used in relation to activity in subject fields are course credit hours, student credit hours or contact hours. There was discussion about the difficulties associated with attempting to derive contact hours, given that institutional practices vary in the way contact hours are determined.

A pilot project participant suggested that more statewide uniformity in distributing the credits earned would ameliorate the difficulty associated with zero-credit labs and the distribution of faculty responsibility of instructional delivery. Another suggestion was to use system-assigned contact hours for zero-credit labs in lecture/lab courses, standardized by the number of course credit hours of the related lecture.

Lechler indicated that in the Faculty Course Sections Taught (ST) file, it is likely that "Course Section Instructor Pay Distribution" will be removed as a data element. The data item seems to be of little significance in Resource Analysis cost allocation, and there no longer appears to be a need to collect division of responsibility for faculty workload purposes.

Note: A Faculty Demographics (FD) file and a Non-faculty Employee (NF) file were developed as a result of discussions among participants at the meeting and Regents' discussions following the meeting.
 

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Last updated June 1, 1998