At its April 9 meeting, the Texas State Faculty Senate discussed the new increased enrollment requirements for summer classes and the possible pay cuts for faculty.
A memo from the Provost’s Office said a faculty member teaching a graduate course with fewer than 10 students will be paid at a rate of one-tenth of their regular summer salary for each student. For example, if a faculty member teaches a graduate course with nine students over the summer, they would receive nine-tenths of their regular summer salary.
The memo also stated that a faculty member teaching an undergraduate course with fewer than 15 students will be paid one-fifteenth of their regular summer salary per student.
Based on the Texas State Summer Faculty workload, before the new summer policy, faculty were paid one-ninth of their base salary from the fall and spring semesters with per a per-summer-term term taught.
According to Texas College Salaries, the average salary of a Texas State professor is $62,262; however, payroll varies based on the type of professor and department. In the memo, there are examples of how new summer compensation would be calculated. For one summer semester, a professor with an average salary of $62,262 for fall and spring semesters would be paid $5,188.50. However, with the new compensation policy, a professor teaching an undergrad course with one out of 15 students would be paid $345.90
President Kelly Damphousse and Vice Provost Vedaraman Sriraman were present to address questions from the Faculty Senate.
Damphousse said at the faculty senate meeting he doesn’t want to cancel classes just because it has low enrollment, but with the new summer compensation policy, faculty will be paid per student in an under-enrolled class to keep that class running.
“We know students need these classes, so we need to be recruiting kids to come to these classes,” Damphousse said at the faculty senate meeting.
The memo stated that the savings generated through the new summer compensation policy will be allocated to the faculty merit pool in fiscal year 2026 for possible general pay raises
“It’s not ample time to announce a dramatic change and how we are going to run [summer],” Michael Supancic, faculty senator from the criminal justice department, said.
Damphousse said at the meeting 12-month degree programs, including the physical therapy program and the master’s in education technology, along with internships, practicum hours, thesis hours and dissertation hours, are exempt from the summer compensation policy and will receive normal pay.
“It wasn’t announced in time for faculty to make other modifications or preparations in their own lives in terms of earning the salary that they typically earned in past summers,” Supancic said at the faculty senate meeting.
While the amount of money Texas State is losing from the current summer policy is not specified, Damphousse said during the faculty senate meeting that keeping the current summer compensation would be an inevitable loss of money for the university.
The memo said while enrollments decreased to 24,277 in the summer 2024, the number of teachers increased to 1,708, which led to an increase in summer costs. The total number of student credit hours produced in summer 2021 decreased by 13%, with class sizes getting smaller.
“If you have a small class in the fall and spring that’s built into the budget, summer school has to be self-sustaining, so we can’t have classes running that don’t make [enough money],” Damphousse said at the faculty senate meeting.
Damphousse said at the meeting he wasn’t aware that the faculty senate did not know of the new summer compensation policy before the memo, because the deans had already been informed.
“I think the primary complaint is the lack of input at the earlier stages. It would be appreciated, not just from the Faculty Senate but also the actual faculty who are having a new financial situation,” Noland Martin, faculty senator from the biology department, said at the faculty senate meeting.
According to Damphousse, the summer compensation policy is soft-launching for summer 2025 courses and will be fully in place by summer 2026.
The Faculty Senate convenes at 4 p.m. every Wednesday. For more information, visit its website.