From the Harvard Crimson: 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.
...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... 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...
...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...
Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/1/28/time-caps-teaching-load/.
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