Contract Review (17)
The area of distance education is a rapidly changing one. Recognizing this, 17 institutions included terms to reopen sections of the contract for re-negotiation should changing conditions in distance education warrant it. This category also included terms where the union and the institution were unable to reach agreement on areas of distance education and left them open to further negotiation. This is a permissive area for bargaining.
Examples
Observations. As noted, distance education is a rapidly changing area of education. However, there are basic topics which do not change very rapidly, for example, copyright, class size and evaluation. Negotiating teams have the discretion in many cases to choose what to address through the contract versus what to address in policy. One might argue that those areas that are more rapidly changing should be addressed in policy while more stable topics should be reserved for the contract.
That being said, for many institutions, negotiating distance education is relatively new, even if distance education has been around on the campus for a long time. Let’s take the example of Ulster County Community College. This study reviewed three contracts from that institution. In its 2000 contract, there was no mention of distance education, with the exception of the Distance Education coordinator being mentioned in a list of administrators. In its 2004 contract, the only mention of distance education was to say that the college would establish a committee to examine the topic. It was not until the 2008 contract that distance education was fully explored, with 12 distance education terms included. With such gradual adoption of distance education terms, it is not surprising that both Unions and Administrators choose to allow as much flexibility as possible when exploring distance education issues.