Overworked and Underpaid: PSU history professor Ken Ruoff presides over the first day of a maxed-out East Asian history course. Ruoff has 60 students and no assistants to help with grading. IMAGE: darryl James

When Portland State University announced plans last November to hire several tenure-track professors with expertise in “sustainability,” the news struck some current faculty members as odd—a bit like sticking a few green thumbs in the cracks of a dike.

For about 1,060 PSU professors and other academic professionals represented by the American Association of University Professors, working at the school has long seemed an exercise in patchwork. Association members say they have felt the pressure to perform more work with less support, even as they’ve been falling behind in pay.

And now, the union is about to enter third-party mediation with the administration at PSU, Oregon’s largest university.

The current two-year contract expired in August but has since been extended on a monthly basis. Then, in December, negotiations for a new deal broke down over disagreements regarding salary raises and workload.

The contract dispute has an unusual backdrop, one that many people consider positive. For the first time in years, the 2007 Legislature increased the state’s overall budget for postsecondary education by 23 percent in order to rebuild infrastructure. PSU’s share stands at $166 million, a 30 percent rise compared with the previous biennium.

But the Legislature’s money may not be enough to repair years of damage to faculty’s morale and working conditions, some professors say.

In recent years, the number of tenured or tenure-track professors at PSU has not grown significantly. Yet the number of temporary staff has.

Professors say that has weakened the university’s programs because, studies show, an over-reliance on non-tenured faculty lowers graduation rates. Meanwhile, enrollment has skyrocketed—70 percent since 1991 to 26,000 students.

Professors and other instructors, whose salaries are significantly lower than their colleagues’ at peer institutions, are being asked to shoulder the growth without more resources, says Jennifer Ruth, a tenured associate professor of English at PSU.

“It’s beyond the limits of sustainable,” Ruth says.

Which is why the university’s focus on hiring “green” professors from outside PSU seems like a distraction, say Ruth and other professors.

Ken Ruoff, a tenured Japan scholar at PSU, says administrators should address the concerns of faculty members who are already teaching at PSU.

“I don’t think the public understands that the current administration is flushing the university’s future down the toilet by not keeping the good faculty members here and addressing morale issues,” Ruoff says. “I didn’t get a Ph.D. to wear a red T-shirt and raise my fists at union rallies.”

Average salaries at PSU range from $53,590 a year for assistant professors to $70,851 a year for full professors, according to the union. Those figures are nearly $7,000 and $26,000 below the average salaries at peer institutions like University of Illinois, Chicago; and University of Toledo. The average salary at PSU is $5,000 below Oregon State University’s, and $7,400 below University of Oregon’s.

Administrators declined to discuss specifics from the negotiations, but offered WW a prepared statement. “The University has made an excellent salary and benefits offer, which will result in a more competitive total package,” part of the statement read.

Meantime, student-body president Rudy Soto says students are beginning to rally behind the union.

“It’s a crucial moment right now for us,” Soto says. “When you have faculty leaving for pay issues, students get adjunct faculty who don’t have the same availability and focus on teaching.”