Bill Ties Professor's Salaries To Classroom Time

A Scotland county legislator wants professors to spend more time teaching. State Senator Tom McInnis introduced a bill this week to increase their instruction time in the UNC system.

Senate Bill 593 requires professors to teach at least eight classes during each academic year to ensure that students in the state's public universities are taught primarily by faculty rather than graduate students. According to the Laurinburg Exchange, it also ties professors' pay to teaching assignments.

A look at UNC system professors' teaching loads shows that faculty at Elizabeth City State University and Fayetteville State University teach the most, averaging 3.8 courses.

But among UNC system institutions considered to be research intensive, namely UNC Chapel Hill and N.C. State, the bill would achieve a significant shift by nearly doubling course loads for those professors. Full-time tenure-track professors at UNC-Chapel Hill teach an average of 2.3 courses per semester, and N.C. State faculty carry the lowest instructional load on average at two per semester.

A committee to review the bill has not yet been named.