The upcoming issue of the Chronicle has a front-page story (subscription) on a new deal at Kent State University to improve student retention and increase the amount of money generated by attracting research. According to CHE:

Kent State University is trying a new and unusual tactic to improve its status, retention rate, and fund raising - paying cash bonuses to faculty members if the university exceeds its goals in those areas.

The bonuses are built into a contract, approved last month, that covers 864 full-time, tenure-track faculty members who teach and do research on the university's eight campuses. Proposed by Lester A. Lefton, Kent State's president, the "success bonus pool" will be divided among faculty members if the Ohio institution improves retention rates for first-year students and increases the research dollars it generates and the private money raised through its foundation.

Setting aside the question of whether or not this type of incentive scheme is a good idea or not, I suppose one might argue that involving faculty and rewarding them for improving the institution could be a good thing, but perhaps KSU might want to consider including all of the faculty and instructional staff, since presumably they will all be asked to support these institutional goals.

The deal is intended to encompass all eight KSU campuses, but looking at the main campus is enough to raise questions. In 2005, according to our Data Center, KSU's main campus had the following distribution of faculty and instructors:

Even accounting for lighter teaching and research assignments on average, I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the contingent faculty and graduate employees are carrying a significant part of the teaching load and probably have a good deal to do with the research that the institution conducts and pursues. 

It is hard to figure out how an incentive system that doesn't include all stakeholders is supposed to encourage buy-in. This is a conundrum not lost on the lead negotiator for the faculty at KSU.

Cheryl A. Casper, a professor emeritus of economics and chief negotiator for the AAUP chapter at Kent State, says she is unsure how much tenure-track faculty members can pitch in if they don't teach first-year students or are not directly involved in fund raising. But as an economist, she knows that people respond to incentives.

"Lester Lefton was very keen on the idea of trying out an incentive pool," she said. "We were willing to experiment, too."

I suspect contingent faculty might respond to the incentive scheme alright, but perhaps not in a fashion the President Lefton is so keen on.