If they're union, they're not management. If they're not management, they're employees. Employees do not run the "company."

Can't eat your cake and have it, too.

The posted message above is irrelevant to the article. In point of fact, when did "Administration" (a group originally dedicated to facilitating the paperwork at a University, in support of academics) become "Management?"

How sad for Bowling Green that the faculty have taken this step. I hope it occurred to those who voted to unionize that the other unionized faculty in Ohio have (a) not improved their compensation, (b) are usually represented by colleagues who do not represent their school's best teachers and scholars,(c)have undermined fund-raising efforts by alienating wealthy business donors, and (d)have not stopped the erosion of tenure-track faculty lines. Ironically,faculty unions inevitably reduce collegiality and shared governance, even though union organizers typically argue the reverse. These are difficult times for public universities, especially in Ohio, and the newly organized Bowling Green faculty are dreaming if they believe their move will help their university or themselves. With very few exceptions, faculty unions permanently condemn an academic institution to mediocrity.

The statement about "university administrators" not being responsive since 1994 is curious... there have been three presidential administrations since that year, and those three presidents were vastly different on many counts. The top administrative positions have completely turned over multiple times since 1994, and several have turned over multiple times in the past decade. If issues have persisted over that period of time, then it seems to be a stretch to blame it on the "administrators" as if it was a single group of people over time.

Comment #2 reflects a common but destructive myth about the origins and development of the role of administrators in American colleges and universities (and it is even less helpful as a basis for discussing optimal relative roles for administrators and faculty in the modern university). A better understanding might inform the larger discussion for all.

What university isn't doomed to mediocrity?
Harvard is a joke, Berkley, U of Chi, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, you name the place and I show you the rule of mediocrity wrapped up in the marketing of our meritocratic myth.
We all know this, the leaders of our field at Rutgers, U of M, Duke, or where ever aren't special. They're just better marketed.
Anyone who believes that there is some sort of special merit in individual prosperity is drinking the cool-aid.

Admin's are organized, employees should be as well.

Poster 2s obsession with binary thinking and absolutes is so ideologically couched it is almost cute, like a baby pooping its diaper.

To the Bowling Green faculty:

I am not trying to be mean, and am sorry to say this, but if you are a business faculty or engineering faculty you just got screwed.

The article says the faculty "... have long been unhappy with their salaries, a lack of shared governance, and an increase in the hiring of contingent faculty members who have little job security"

1. It won't mean larger raises. My school voted in a union some years back. We used to get 3% raises before it, and we kept getting 3% raises after. But now you will get to pay into the union, which, if you are a business or engineering faculty, will be working to screw you. See below.

2. LIBERAL ARTS FACULTY WILL DOMINATE THE UNION AND IT WILL BE USED TO HELP ONLY THEM, AT THE EXPENSE OF BUSINESS AND ENGINEERING FACULTY! There are many, many more of them than there are business and engineering faculty. And they of course see no reason why business faculty should be paid well over $100,000, while Enlgish or Sociology faculty are paid $50,000. They will push for "minimum" salaries as a bargaining goal that give them all raises and take away from the money available for business and engineering faculty. They will push for other changes that give more money to liberal arts and science type faculty while business salaries are limited. Basically, the liberal arts faculty will dominate the union, and will throw business/engineering faculty under the bus to shift resources to themselves.

3. We hire more contingent, or adjunct, faculty than we did before we had the union. Basically, the union will give on this issue in order to get more money for the union members already working, just like auto workers give up on future hires' salary in order to keep their own salaries higher.

4. The administration will benefit. It will simply say, "here is how much money we have to give to raises. Here is the pool" and will let the faculty argue about how that gets divided. And liberal arts faculty are not going to go along with the money going to business and engineering faculty who are already paid much higher.

Welcome to the world of Socialism.

Three cheers for the AAUP! Let's get some pro-union action out here in Arizona!

As a two degree alum of BGSU and a current tenure track faculty member at another institution in the Midwest, I am saddened by this news. I have worked at two union institutions previous to my current school (which is thankfully non-union). There is nothing positive about the union environment. The We/They divide is deep and wide. The salaries are not that much better, especially for new TT hires. The non-TT pay is even more insulting and the benefits are laughable and locked-in for all regardless. Best of luck to the faculty negotiators who championed this cause. I fear it will be for the worse. To all who voted "No" but have to live under this new paradigm...roll along you BG Warriors...if the union will allow that.

Workers of the world unite. Unions in 2010 are about as relevant to the workplace as Mad Men is to the world of advertising.

Er... can all you faculty union naysayers please supply an alternative? Those of us that are quite concerned with the decline of faculty governance and the rise of "adjunctification" feel that there is most certainly a need for extensive reform. If a faculty union is not an acceptable solution, I would be interested to hear of other options.

Big mistake - Unions have detracted from employees for close to two generations. How sad it is that Bowling Green State could not treat its faculty employees happy enough to avoid this. Shame on the administration and shame on the faculty - quality will inevitably go down at BSGU.

#11 - the reform will come when administration reforms - unfortunately not sooner - their focus needs to be on quality of education (faculty) and not on the bottom line. It's all connected in a sad string of declining significance of higher ed as unintentionally designed by the federal government.

Remember that most faculty are Democrats/Liberal and unions are a favored group. It is not surprising that any faculty would vote to unionize. After all unions are what they have supported for decades.

The people arguing above that unionization at BGSU is a bad idea don't seem to work here as faculty--or to know details about the measurable positive impact on faculty salaries and working conditions, and thus on the health of institutions and on education, throughout Ohio. If you think unionized higher education inevitably leads to mediocrity, then you believe that Canadian universities are mediocre by definition. I don't think it's accurate to say this vote happened because of identification with unions. If anything, the people I talked to associated unions with blue-collar workers who are not people "like us."

I wasn't here for the previous vote, but I've been here through two presidents whose expensive vanity projects have been paid for by removing investment in faculty, the core of the place, in connection with moves to make faculty irrelevant in decisions affecting the future of the university, including a massive curriculum change that includes a big workload increase, and the destruction of graduate education. There have been different faces in administration, but with a hardening culture that defined faculty as the adversary before the current union campaign began. Decisions are made by members of the growing class of non-academic administrators (with increased use of consultants). Of course we have genuine faculty administrators as well. But the dean of my college is, in every issue that counts, powerless. Everyone in administration and on committees who cares has had to choose between quitting and staying to be the lesser evil. If this change is not yet happening on your campus, good--and good luck.

The administration did its part to secure this vote; it inundated us with emails and mailings, and personal conversations, full of threats and easily challenged lies. Those communications encouraged pro-union activity that might have been less energetic otherwise, gave the union effort an opportunity to play a good-cop role that it hadn't had before, started people who were on the fence wondering what were the facts. But the outcome was largely the result of long-term deterioration in support of faculty, followed by the long, hard work of many people across campus. A comprehensive, problem-solving, practical-information-sharing grassroots effort--with good leadership--made it happen.

Congratulations to Bowling Green's faculty. I was deeply involved in the unionizaton effort at the University of Vermont and then served as its first president. It was a tremendous amount of work but well worth it. Those who are opposed to it simply don't realize how much money the administration had sequestered away in dubious accounts. My favorite was the "Liquid Plant Fund" which some years had very little in it, others was jammed with money. What it was for we could never get a straight answer. There was tension at times between the various groups of faculty, but we managed to handle it well with representation from all groups and working closely with the Faculty Senate, so that we did not go into areas we weren't needed. But above all, provided a sense of stability--in salary as well as benefits. I have heard all the arguments against faculty unions but none of them has ever answered honestly the question of what could possibly be wrong with adults taking part in the representation of their interests? That the administration could do all of this simply fails to honestly look at the quality of administrators these days, and look on unions as unchanging things from the 1930s. Both of these views are sadly mistaken and I wouldn't bet my salary on.