Tenured faculty members are expected to help support themselves with patient revenues or grants. The campus currently guarantees 80 percent of the AAMC average. The at-risk portion of the salary fluctuates depending on the productivity of faculty members and their departments. A similar idea has been suggested at the general academic level. A base salary would be guaranteed and the remainder of the annual salary would be earned by achieving specific accomplishments for the year.
Small classes represent another inefficient use of faculty resources.
While the number of classes offered does not affect state support, undersized classes do affect institutional costs. A faculty member teaching two graduate classes of four students each would fulfill workload requirements at some research institutions. Ironically, as Texas developed performance measures to discourage overly large classes and encourage more undergraduate teaching by tenured faculty, it contributed to funding unrealistically small classes. If course enrollment drops below ten, the class is dropped and the instructor is assigned to another class. Until that time, the standards derived by TPR should be used to evaluate faculty teaching loads and make funding adjustments.