Harvard Offers to Remove Time Caps for Preceptors and Lecturers in Exchange for Higher Course Load Requirements

Harvard pushed to increase the course load of non-tenure-track faculty at a bargaining session last Friday, escalating tensions with the union’s thousands of members as the negotiations drag into their second year.

The proposal would permit the University to require lecturers and preceptors, who typically teach a maximum of four and five classes, to take on up to five or six class sections per year, respectively.

The move marks Harvard’s third attempt at upping the workload of non-tenure-track faculty.

A February offer from the University would have allowed preceptors to be considered for a series of tiered promotions at the end of their existing appointments. The University then offered to remove time caps in May on the condition that lecturers be required to teach a minimum of 50 students per year.

Harvard’s Friday proposal also adds a similar condition for preceptors, requiring a yearly minimum of 30 students — terms the union deemed problematic for departments which rely mainly on non-tenure-track faculty.

The union rejected Harvard’s offer all three times.

Harvard Academic Workers-United Auto Workers, which represented more than 2,600 non-ladder faculty as of Wednesday, has been negotiating since September 2024 for their first contract. Friday’s bargaining session marked the second time the union had resumed negotiating with the University since nearly 1,300 members demanded Harvard agree to a contract last November.

But with no contract in sight still, Harvard moved to put more on their plates — a move that would “create a headache for departments,” according to Sara M. Feldman, a preceptor in Yiddish and a member of the HAW-UAW bargaining committee.

A University spokesperson declined to comment.

Though a new maximum course load would not necessarily create more courses for non-tenure-track faculty, the union raised concerns that current financial constraints could give the University a “strong incentive” to up the status quo to five or six courses per year.

“Our workloads are already quite heavy,” HAW-UAW bargaining committee member and Expository Writing preceptor J. Gregory Given said.

“Even agreeing to current work workload conditions is going to be a problem in the contract bargaining, because in some cases, we think that our workloads should be reduced in order to make us more effective,” Given added.

The change in course load expectations would be particularly detrimental for preceptors — oftentimes working professionals who teach a small number of classes, he said. With small class sizes that demand closer one-on-one mentorship with students, many worried an additional class would further divide their attention, according to Given.

“The idea that we would already have too much work was not one that was speakable in these conversations,” he said.

A hiring freeze sparked staffing difficulties for many of the smaller language programs at Harvard earlier this year. Compounded by caps on non-tenure track faculty’s time at the University, a number of languages — including Yiddish, Armenian, and a number of smaller Slavic languages — have struggled to survive.

Feldman is in her last year of teaching at Harvard before her eight-year contract expires in May.

“I have worked for years to build up this program,” she said. “As I work with my own students, I can’t promise them anything for next year.”

Harvard offered to eliminate time caps on the condition that all current non-ladder faculty must reapply at the end of their current appointment for an uncapped position in a May counterproposal to the union. But the union refused to agree, citing a list of other restrictions the University sought to impose.

Given argued that the requirement to reapply was unnecessary, exacerbating the cost and time burden on departments already stretched thin by shrinking faculty.

“There’s no reason to run a whole international search to get a couple hundred applicants, vet everybody out again just to see if that person is still the best person for the job,” he said.

“They’re explicitly setting us up for a trade between our own job security and the quality of our instruction by trying to strong-arm us into taking on additional courses,” he added. “We refuse to compromise our teaching in that way.”

—Staff writer Taylor M. Bierwerth can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @tmbierwerth

—Staff writer Noah A. Ferris can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @noahaferris.