Equity among assistant professors in instructional work load

Abstract

In recent years salary equity has been the focus of studies dealing with equity. This paper extends the concept of equity to include faculty instructional activities or work load. In an effort to determine to what extent instructional efforts differed between men and women at a large land-grant university, the following variables were investigated: number of weighted student credit hours, number of sections taught, number of different courses taught, and didactic hours by level of course. Because the faculty members varied in their full-time-equivalent instructional effort, it was necessary to normalize the data. When men and women were compared for equity of instructional activity (MANOVA) taking their college into consideration, there was no significant difference by sex or from the interaction of college with sex. When a balancing technique was used to review men and women by departments, again no significant differences were found in the pattern of instructional activity within the group of departments being compared.