Recently proposed college scholar-ships for faculty children, and medical insurance for faculty families yesterday met with strong criticism in all faculty ranks from instructor to full professor.
The proposals were among recommendations for fringe benefits made in a report to President Pusey by the Committee on Compensation, one of three presidential survey groups appointed last Fall. Pusey is expected to use the report to prepare a program for submission to the Corporation.
The Corporation must decide how to allocate the Ford Foundation's $4.5 million grant of last December for salary increases. The Compensation Committee's proposals would cost $480,000 per year, almost ten percent of present salaries.
"Straight salary increases equal to the amounts that will be spent on fringe benefits would be much more equitable," Adam B. Ulam, associate professor of Government, commented.
Full Professor Backs Ulan
"The full tuition scholarships and family medical insurance will ease the situation of many seriously burdened family men, but they will do nothing for those individuals in an equally bad position who have to support their parents or other dependents," Ulam said.
A full professor who preferred to remain anonymous agreed with Ulam's criticisms. "In some cases, men with large private incomes and who may also be earning money on outside projects will receive $4000 for each child they send to college, not to mention hospital benefits," the professor said.
Others joined Ulam in asserting that few, if any, groups in the faculty were yet sufficiently well paid to be "ignored" while most of the aid was focused on senior faculty members with college-age children. The scholarship proposal alone, they noted, would take up almost two-fifths of the benefits. In addition, this group would take its share from the transitional retirement and other proposals.
Although junior faculty members with young children would share the approx- imate one-fifth of the benefits devoted to family medical and insurance proposals, they would still have many more financial problems than older men in the senior faculty, critics stated.
Direct salary increases would be subject to taxes of about 30 percent, however, Gordon M. Fair '16, Master of Dunster House and one of the supporters of the report, observed.
Ulam stated that if the University were to be really fair, it would find one fringe benefit leading to another with ever increasing complications
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