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Faculty Merit Act

Model Higher Education Code
Mission Statement ActAccreditation Autonomy ActAccreditation Autonomy ResolutionSyllabus Transparency ActFaculty Merit ActCollege Finances ActIn-State Enrollment ActChina Gifts ActCampus Freedoms ActHigher Education Gateway Requirements ActHuman Nature ActCampus Due Process ActCampus Intellectual Diversity ActUniversities Nondiscrimination ActProfessional Association Liberty ActOmbudsman ActGeneral Education ActSchool of Intellectual Freedom ActSchool of Classical Education ActProgram Review ActCollege Credit ActCore Curriculum ActAmerican History ActHeritage Certificates Act

Introduction

Administrators and faculty at colleges and university regularly discriminate in their hiring and tenuring. Usually they do so by merely political discrimination—they draft job advertisements with specializations that will ensure only radicals need apply, such as a preference for environmental history, human rights, and/or social movements. The National Association of Scholars’ (NAS) research has discovered that political discrimination frequently is a fig-leaf for straightforward discrimination by race and sex. Colleges and universities systematically discriminate, and thereby they systematically undermine the principles of individual merit and freedom of inquiry. As they do so, they frequently break anti-discrimination laws. Such discrimination is notorious, even if it cannot always be proven in a court of law.

Faculty merit has declined precipitously as a result. Political, race, and sex discrimination has become so pervasive that faculty are less capable than they were in previous generations. The effect is particularly pronounced in more politicized disciplines: few close observers believe that the average professor of ethnic studies is as acute as the average professor of physics. Colleges and universities claim the public deference due to organizations that efficiently select their professoriate for intellectual merit, but their practices long since have forfeit the grounds for receiving that deference from the public.

Policymakers should take measures to inhibit discrimination by political affiliation, race, and sex in the hiring and tenuring of faculty. They also should take measures to publicize declining faculty merit. While existing laws already prohibit discrimination, new academic transparency can make clear the existence of such discrimination and make it easier to remedy. 

Our model Faculty Merit Act promotes academic transparency by requiring all parts of a state university system to publish every higher-education standardized test score (SAT, ACT, CRT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, etc.) of every faculty member, as well as the standardized test score of every applicant for the faculty member’s position, of every applicant selected for a first interview, and every applicant selected for a final interview. The Act also requires the university to post the average standardized test score of the faculty in every department. It finally requires everyone in the hiring process, both applicant and administrators, to affirm under penalty of perjury that they have provided every standardized test score.

A standardized test is only a rough proxy for academic merit—especially as the College Board has weakened its tests. Some professors will have a greater ability to teach and do research than appears on a SAT score. But standardized tests do provide some measure of general intelligence. The public will learn something if a professor has lower standardized test scores than the rival applicants for his position. It will learn something more if each round of the application process consistently rejected applicants with higher standardized test score. It also will learn something if there were very few applicants for a position—as frequently happens with cluster hiring—since that will indicate a job search carefully crafted for a small set of applicants.

The public also will learn something by comparing the average standardized test score of different departments. If Ethnic Studies professors have standardized test scores two standardized deviations below those of physics professors, then the public will have better means to assess the claims of the professoriate to intellectual capacity that merits public deference.

Perhaps most importantly, this information will provide a mass of statistical information that can be used for lawsuits by victims of discrimination in the academic hiring process. Many such lawsuits founder because the hiring process is a “black box,” and plaintiffs cannot get proof to conclusively prove discrimination. The Faculty Merit Act will provide a mass of information that can be used by plaintiffs against discriminatory colleges and universities. Providing that information will have a deterrent effect and thereby prevent a great deal of such discrimination from happening in the first place.

The Act’s effectiveness depends on standardized testing companies not colluding in discrimination. Several years ago the College Board considered disguising its real data behind “adversity scores”, and it may soften its tests so much that they provide no data to distinguish faculty applicants from one another. Then too, if the Act becomes law, both hiring committees and faculty applicants presumably will work to game the system. Nevertheless, publicizing standardized test scores will do a great deal to publicize and deter the systematic discrimination by political ideology, race, and sex that has corrupted American higher education.

Model Legislative Text

Section A [“Faculty Merit”]  

  1. The {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and every administrative unit responsible for cluster hiring, shall require that teaching personnel shall provide their scores on every advanced standardized test that applicant has taken, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT.
  2. The {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and every administrative unit responsible for cluster hiring, shall require that each applicant for a teaching position shall provide the applicants score on every advanced standardized test that applicant has taken, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT.
  3. The {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and every administrative unit responsible for cluster hiring, shall preserve in readily accessible and analyzable electronic form the information received in Subsection 1 and Subsection 2.
  4. The {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and every administrative unit responsible for cluster hiring, shall post on its Internet website an annual report of each faculty member’s score on every advanced standardized test that faculty member has taken, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT.
    1. Each faculty member’s score shall be accompanied by the de-identified scores on every advanced standardized test taken by all applicants for that faculty member’s position, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT. 
    2. Each faculty member’s score shall be accompanied by the de-identified scores on every advanced standardized test taken by all applicants selected for a first-round interview for that faculty member’s position, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT.
    3. Each faculty member’s score shall be accompanied by the de-identified scores on every advanced standardized test taken by all applicants selected for a second-round interview for that faculty member’s position, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT.
  5. The {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and every administrative unit responsible for cluster hiring, shall post on its Internet website an annual report of the mean, median, and mode score of its faculty members on every advanced standardized test that faculty members have taken, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT.
    1. The mean, median, and mode score of its faculty members shall be accompanied by the de-identified scores on every advanced standardized test taken by all applicants for those faculty members’ positions, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT. 
    2. The mean, median, and mode score of its faculty members shall be accompanied by the de-identified scores on every advanced standardized test taken by all applicants selected for a first-round interview for those faculty members’ positions, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT.
    3. The mean, median, and mode score of its faculty members shall be accompanied by the de-identified scores on every advanced standardized test taken by all applicants selected for a second-round interview for those faculty members’ positions, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT.
  6. The information posted by the {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and every administrative unit responsible for cluster hiring, on the institution’s Internet website, as required in Subsection 4 and Subsection 5, must be accessible from the institution’s Internet website home page by use of not more than three links; searchable by keywords and phrases; and accessible to the public without requiring registration or use of a user name, a password, or another user identification.
  7. Individual faculty members or applicants for teaching positions, the head of the responsible school, office, department, or cluster hiring administrative unit, the president of {State} public university, and the {Board of Regents} must each independently certify under penalty of perjury that to fulfill the requirements of Subsection 1 and Subsection 2, to the best of their knowledge and after reasonable review and investigation, they have provided every advanced standardized test that applicant has taken, including the ACT, the Classic Learning Test, the Law School Admissions Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the SAT.
  8. Individual teaching personnel and applicants for teaching positions may be excepted from the requirements of Subsection 1 and Subsection 2 if the faculty member or applicant, the head of the responsible school, office, department, or cluster hiring administrative unit, the president of {State} public university, and the {Board of Regents} each independently certify under penalty of perjury that to the best of their knowledge and after reasonable review and investigation they have not found any standardized test scores for the individual teaching personnel or applicants, or that these standardized test scores no longer can be provided to {State} public university, and attach to their independent certifications an explanation of the circumstances that make it impossible to provide these standardized test scores..

Section B [“Severability”]  

If any provision of this chapter, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this chapter and the application of its provisions to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected thereby.

The National Association of Scholars, in consultation with other supporters and friends of the Civics Alliance, drafted these model bills to translate into legislative language the principles in the Civics Alliance’s Civics Curriculum Statement & Open Letter. Just as these bills have been drafted with the expectation that different states will modify them as they see fit, they also have been drafted with the expectation that not every supporter of the Civics Alliance will endorse these bills or every part of them. Individual Civics Alliance signatories and supporters should not be assumed to have endorsed these bills, unless they say so explicitly.

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