Harvard also has a financial incentive to rely on non-ladder faculty, whose salaries are significantly less than those of ladder faculty. According to Alison D. Jones, lecturer on sociology, a non-ladder faculty member in the Sociology Department earns approximately three-quarters the salary of a junior faculty member.

A ZERO-SUM GAME

For all they contribute to undergraduate education, non-ladder faculty never earn the job security of the tenure track.

Until recently, lecturers and preceptors operated under annual contracts but with restrictions on their stay at Harvard: lecturers can stay for up to three years, preceptors can stay for up to five years, and Expos preceptors can teach for eight years.

FAS has since implemented some changes in response to recommendations in the report. The School now allows lecturers and preceptors to be hired on multi-year contracts “where there is a clear curricular need for doing so,” FAS Spokesperson Jeff Neal wrote in an emailed statement.

But with tenure still off the table, departments must sometimes retain their prized non-ladder faculty members by offering them administrative duties. Non-ladder positions with administrative duties are significantly more stable but also more competitive. These instructors, including professors of the practice, senior lecturers, and senior preceptors, are appointed for five-year terms that are indefinitely renewable.

“Getting a position like this is almost as hard as getting tenure,” says Paul G. Bamberg ’63, a senior lecturer on mathematics.

With many of the most coveted non-ladder posts out of reach for the majority of the non-ladder faculty, some young teachers find themselves choosing between maintaining high teaching standards and conducting research in order to qualify for the tenure track.

According to Katarina A. Burin, a visiting lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies, the requirements for tenure have created a zero-sum game between an instructor’s research and his or her teaching.

“Honestly,” says Jones, the lecturer in sociology, “I worry that the amount of time I put into my teaching is gradually diminishing my chance of getting a tenure track position, because I’m spending less time getting publications out.”

But Jones, who is in the midst of her second of three years as a lecturer, said she cannot see herself devoting any less time to her classes.

“It’s so hard for me, because I value teaching, and I think the classes I am teaching, which are more hands-on, are really better,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out all these things in my life, and determine, given the constraints of the system, what are my best options.”

Under the current system, the position of non-senior lecturer can act as a stepping stone to more permanent positions. Lecturers, especially in the social sciences, are often young post-docs who hold the position until they receive a tenure-track offer, from Harvard or another university.

“[People] explained politely that doing this sort of thing perpetually was not in keeping with the Harvard system,” Bamberg explains of his first position teaching physics as a lecturer.

And while Jones is content with the teaching responsibilities that her non-ladder position entails, ultimately she, like many of her non-ladder colleagues, is searching for a more stable job.