APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 9: Proposal for Affirmative Action on the Supply Side

This is an elaboration of the first component of the proposed program discussed in the last section of Chapter 9, pages 146-147.

Purpose This proposal is designed to increase significantly the supply of female and minority-group faculty who are qualified for university positions carrying tenure in fields where they have heretofore been quite rare. The aim would be to develop enough women and minority persons as outstanding teacher-scholars to provide a critical mass, and thus to eliminate a sense of peculiarity, separateness, and other restraints on the development and use of their talents for such a career. By providing a critical mass, the proposal would hope to reduce subtle barriers and to provide the momentum for further increases after the government's affirmative supply effort in that field is discontinued.

Fields for supply development Criteria for the selection of fields for such supply development would include: (1) the scarcity of female and/or minority-group senior faculty in the field and (2) the relative need for talented female and minority-group teacherscholars in the field to help train female and minority-group practitioners and teacher-scholars for the future. Among the fields that should be considered in the arts and sciences are chemistry, economics, geology, mathematics, physics, and statistics; and among the professional schools: architecture and urban planning, business administration, engineering, and public administration.

Kinds of training and development For increasing the supply of well-qualified female and minority-group faculty in a selected field, government encouragement and support would be needed for the two stages of advanced training and development: (1) grad

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uate training for the Ph.D. or its equivalent and (2) postdoctoral development as a teacher-scholar during the first five to seven years as a regular faculty member, when one needs the opportunities to make a reputation as a teacher-researcher that would qualify him or her for a tenure post at a respected institution of higher education.

The duration of graduate training for the Ph.D. might be considered four years. The development period as assistant professor is usually five to seven years. Together they amount to about ten years but, of course, each stage could be handled separately. What these time intervals do indicate is the rather long training period to achieve prominence as a teacher-scholar.

Encouragement of affirmative action supply plans The federal government, after selecting the fields for such special supplyincrease efforts and deciding for each field the increase in numbers it wishes at each stage each year, would establish the terms of encouragement and support that such plans would have. To help attract female and minority-group Ph.D. candidates into those fields and to demonstrate the federal government's interest in doing so, probably some federal support for fellowships would be needed in addition to university and possibly foundation fellowship funds. That would also provide some incentive for universities to submit affirmative action supply plans for Ph.D. training.

For teacher-scholar development of assistant professors, probably no federal financial support would be necessary. The individuals selected would be paid regular salaries for regular faculty service. Universities would presumably be interested in submitting AAS plans for such reasons as the following: (1) the institution's faculty and administration have a genuine desire to expand the number of highly qualified female and minority-group faculty in the field, (2) credit would be given to such an effort in terms of contract compliance, and (3) the numbers of female and/or minority-group assistant professors in an AAS plan would displace the numerical goals for such assistant professors in the institution's affirmative action demand plan, and such goals would be difficult to work out for those fields in any case. Furthermore, it would be necessary to recognize that female and/or minority-group assistant professors recruited under plans for supply increase would not be likely to have the same opportunities for promotion to tenure at their institution as assistant professors appointed on the basis

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of open competition, with the prospects for a tenure opening more definitely in mind. Those differences should, however, in no way preclude promotion of assistant professors appointed under a supply-increase plan, if that is warranted in open competition, or perhaps inviting them back at a later date. Those possibilities could be among the potential benefits of the plan for the institution.

Content of AAS plans The federal government would specify the material that should be submitted by institutions in the competition to obtain government approval for an AAS plan for Ph.D. training, for the development of able and effective teacher-scholars, or both. An institution's graduate-student AAS plan would specify by year the number of female and minority-group graduate students to be in Ph.D. training under the plan. An institution's facultydevelopment AAS plan would specify the number of female and/or minority-group assistant professors (and advanced instructors where that is the initial appointment) to be on the faculty each year.

In a graduate-student plan, the institution would describe its Ph.D. degree requirements and the nature and content of its graduate training in the field, including the quality of the faculty, the research training facilities and opportunities for graduate students, the quality and numbers of graduate students, the average length of time to complete Ph.D. requirements, the record of the institution's Ph.D. recipients later as teacher-scholars, and similar data.

In the faculty-development plan, the institution would need to set forth the opportunities for its assistant professors to achieve outstanding records in teaching and research. The pertinent material would include: teaching opportunities in undergraduate and graduate courses, teaching loads, quality of students, paid and unpaid leaves of absence for research, research opportunities and support, library and computer facilities, quality of tenured and nontenured faculty, opportunities for discussion with tenured faculty concerning professional matters, and other aspects of teaching and research at the institution. Assurance would need to be given that assistant professors under the AAS plan would have the same rights, privileges, and opportunities as other assistant professors.

Under an accepted AAS plan the university would be free to recruit and select female and minority-group graduate students

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and junior faculty according to the institution's (faculty and deans) judgment of the persons best qualified for its graduate training or assistant professor teaching and research. from among the candidates it is able to recruit. In other words, the institutions would retain freedom of selection of graduate students and junior faculty, and the students and Ph.D. holders seeking assistant professorships would have freedom of choice of university.

Selection and oversight of AAS plans The federal government, in deciding which among the AAS plans submitted it will accept, would base the decision mainly on the quality of the instruction in that field at that institution in the case of graduate-training AAS plans and on the opportunities for developing into outstanding teacher-scholars there in the case of faculty AAS plans.

Government oversight of the accepted plans would be confined to ascertaining whether the institution was performing according to the provisions of its plan as officially accepted. Judgment on that score could be based largely on written reports. Failure to comply with its accepted plan, if not corrected, could lead to withdrawal of acceptance, along with the attendant government support and privileges.

10. Academic Leadership and Constructive Action

The preceding chapters have presented an analysis of the federal government's program of antibias regulation as it is being applied to the faculties of universities. They have shown that the federal program has been flawed by some misconceptions, inappropriate methods of analysis, and erroneous conclusions based on faulty analysis. The main defects in the program can be summarized as follows:

1 Failure to recognize and take into account the fact that demand for tenured faculty is highly individualistic and selective, based on personal achievement of the highest quality as a teacher-scholar and stimulated by competition for excellence of faculty (Chapter 2) 2 Failure to make a proper analysis of supply differences by sex and race for academic disciplines and subfields, and to take special account, in affirmative action plans, of human-capital development on the job during the five to seven years after receipt of the Ph.D. degree (Chapter 3)

3 Flaws in the conception and measurement of discrimination under availability-utilization analysis that result in placing undue blame and remedial responsibility on the demand side and lead to inflated numerical hiring goals (Chapters 4 and 5)

4 Pressures for discriminatory hiring to meet inflated goals, resulting in additional, new discrimination and the likelihood of an increasing number of "mistakes" in the selection of tenured faculty (Chapters 2, 3, and 5)

5 Government application of the industry model of authority and personnel management to university faculty operations, with the consequent threat to the faculty system of collegial decision making based on professional assessment of merit (Chapters 7 and 8)