When administrators discuss the extent of budget cuts’ damage to the University so far, they often say LSU has lost 140 faculty positions in the past two years. That number doesn’t translate into 140 fired professors, but administrators still say it hurts students’ learning experience.
Robert Kuhn, associate vice chancellor for the Office of Budget and Planning, says the University has a complicated system of keeping track of professors.
The University keeps track of its faculty in terms of “full-time equivalents,” which count funds, not people, Kuhn said.
When a professor dies, retires, or otherwise vacates a position, that position doesn’t disappear — it remains open and funded.
If a department does not hire a replacement immediately within one fiscal year, the college dean gets the funding for that position, Kuhn said.
“We do this to give us some flexibility in terms of hiring,” Kuhn said.
Those funds can then be used to bolster department budgets or hire instructors to replace teaching loads temporarily, Kuhn said.
Because a tenured professor position contains much more money than an instructor position, more than one instructor can be using a vacant professor line. So two instructors could be teaching classes but would count as a single FTE position, Kuhn said.
So the University hasn’t exactly lost 140 people — it has lost 140 positions, many of them vacant.
Keeping vacant positions open also allows administrators to cut vacant positions, which preserves jobs for currently serving faculty, Kuhn said.
But administrators say the eliminated positions are still hurting students.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jack Hamilton made perhaps the most dramatic example using the 140 figure when he spoke to a Jan. 24 meeting of the Baton Rouge Press Club.
Hamilton delivered his speech flanked by 140 empty folding chairs that he said represented the University’s faculty.
“That’s 140 faculty who would be teaching class, producing research, winning federal grants and shaping students’ lives,” Hamilton said. “Maybe you can understand as a result of this that it’s disheartening to hear people say that LSU has not suffered any losses.”
Hamilton said while 140 professors haven’t lost their jobs, it’s still fair to say the reduced positions have hurt the University.
“These are people that should be teaching,” Hamilton said.
“You start having to make decisions not based on who you want to stay and who you want to leave, but what’s open.”
 
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Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]