{"id":438,"date":"2012-04-27T18:09:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T16:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=438"},"modified":"2012-04-27T18:09:03","modified_gmt":"2012-04-27T16:09:03","slug":"by-decree-the-new-teaching-workload","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2012\/04\/27\/by-decree-the-new-teaching-workload\/","title":{"rendered":"BY DECREE: THE NEW TEACHING WORKLOAD <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday, 21 April, the Spanish Government issued a new decree (see BOE http:\/\/www.boe.es\/boe\/dias\/2012\/04\/21\/pdfs\/BOE-A-2012-5337.pdf<\/a>), cheerfully called \u201cde medidas urgentes de racionalizaci\u00f3n del gasto p\u00fablico en el \u00e1mbito educativo.\u201d According to this decree, although university teachers are still supposed to teach 24 ECTS credits a year (= 4 semestral subjects), this workload may be increased or decreased, depending on the commitment to research of the said teachers. <\/p>\n

This is measured in research assessment periods (the famous \u2018tramos\u2019): a senior lecturer (\u2018titular\u2019) needs 3 to be honoured with an 8-ECTS credit reduction; a full professor (\u2018catedr\u00e1tico\u2019) needs 4. If, no matter what rank you belong to, you have fewer \u2018tramos\u2019, then you can be asked to teach up to 32 ECTS credits. The UAB is debating these days how to apply the decree, as the schedule for next year is almost finished. Also, the figures fit badly our subjects, which are 6, 9 or 12 ECTS credits. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my personal view: I\u2019m VERY worried, as this decree does not distinguish between teachers who simply do not do any kind of research and never have, and young\/er teachers who have not had the time to accumulate 3 \u2018tramos\u2019 but who do struggle to do research and teach 24 ECTS credits (plus admin work). It\u2019s easy to see that, if asked to teach more, our research \u2013for I myself don\u2019t have the magical 3 \u2018tramos\u2019\u2013 will suffer for it. In contrast, senior teachers with plenty of research to their names are privileged for that, but not really encouraged to gain a fourth or fifth \u2018tramo,\u2019 depending on the case.<\/p>\n

I must say that I fully agree that teachers who don\u2019t do research should have a greater workload. 30 or 32 ECTS credits seems right. To begin with, I\u2019ve never understood why the university tolerates that some teachers \u2013including professors who got tenure before \u2018tramos\u2019 were established back in 1982 (I think)\u2013 do no research whatsoever. Since, however, they are tolerated, then it is obvious that as these teachers have more time in their hands than us, researchers, they should either teach more or run all the admin in the Department. I know this might irk some colleagues but I\u2019d really like to know on what they spend the time that we researchers use for, well, research. I know that my life would be relatively stress-free if I only taught my classes.<\/p>\n

Using research assessment periods as the measuring rod is both clever and perverse. As they are notoriously hard to get, many (young\/er) teachers will consider whether they\u2019re worth the effort in comparison to teaching an extra subject; they might even decide to give up research altogether. This will indeed help the Government save money, as they\u2019ll have to pay for fewer \u2018tramos\u2019 and there will be also fewer candidates, in the case of senior lecturers, to apply for tenure as full professors. Not to mention the savings in staff, as fewer teachers will suffice. In any case, with increased fees (also itemised in the decree), we\u2019ll have fewer students \u2013ironically, we might not need to teach 32 ECTS credits at all!<\/p>\n

Finally, if the Department in question has enough resources (and students), there will be no need to force researchers to teach 32 ECTS credits, but if that\u2019s not the case, the fight will be hard. If, suppose, I get my third \u2018tramo\u2019 and demand to teach 16 ECTS credits \u2013it would be stupid of me not to do so\u2013 someone else will have to teach the 8-credit difference. That is to say: one of my colleagues will be \u2018punished\u2019 for my (supposed) efficiency even though s\/he might be a better researcher than myself but just younger or less fortunate when applying for \u2018tramos\u2019. Tough luck…<\/p>\n

I forgot to say that, with the new UAB regulations, credits are combined with the number of students in class, so that my 6 credits for the first-year subject Literatura del s. XX (92 students registered) amount actually to 10, whereas my 6 credits for the MA subject Postmodern Textualities and Sexualities (5 students) count as just 4\u20195 credits. Teachers working in the first and second year might end up, thus, teaching the equivalent of 50 ECTS; those in the fourth year and the MA less than 10.<\/p>\n

How this rationalizes anything is beyond me. Deep sigh… multiplied by 32.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday, 21 April, the Spanish Government issued a new decree (see BOE http:\/\/www.boe.es\/boe\/dias\/2012\/04\/21\/pdfs\/BOE-A-2012-5337.pdf), cheerfully called \u201cde medidas urgentes de racionalizaci\u00f3n del gasto p\u00fablico en el \u00e1mbito educativo.\u201d According to this decree, although university teachers are still supposed to teach 24 ECTS credits a year (= 4 semestral subjects), this workload may be increased or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-teaching-tools-and-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}