The potential for Faculty turnover has decreased since 1993, when universities became legally unable to require professors to retire when they reach the age of 75.

Because the Faculty has a limited number of tenured professorships, departments can make new hires only when senior Faculty members themselves decide the time has come to step down--or when new positions are created.

"[Increased female tenures] can only happen over time because of the dynamics of demographics," Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 told a group of Radcliffe alumnae several weeks ago. "To think otherwise is delusional."

According to Dean of Undergraduate Education William M. Todd III, for all its perks, administrators must hire new Faculty carefully.

"[The] incorrect ways to expand? [An] increase that does not eventuate in greater opportunities...for undergraduates," he writes in an e-mail message. "For students, it will mean smaller classes, more course choices, more opportunity for contact with Faculty. But if and only if we key the expansion to undergraduate needs."

Todd suggests asking any department that wishes to expand to demonstrate how its expansion will directly impact undergraduates through, for instance, advising or the Core.

"Unless [a department] has a good plan, the increase in faculty is not approved," he writes.

It's a point not lost on CUE member Jared B. Shirck '01.