A study of nontenure-track faculty at Illinois public colleges and universities by the Illinois Board of Higher Education was found incomplete by University Professionals of Illinois President Mitch Vogel.

The report was presented to the UPI, a faculty union that covers Eastern among other public universities, at this month’s Illinois Board of Higher Education meeting at DePaul University. It details the disparities in compensation in contrast with the similarities in workload between Illinois universities’ full- and part-time faculty.

Vogel says the report left too many questions unaddressed and fails to make recommendations for the increasing of part-time and non-tenure track salaries.

Vogel also said that the part-time, non-tenure faculty are left out of major departmental decisions, and the report doesn’t say how much money it is going to take to include part-time faculty, or how much it would take to be able to hire more full-time faculty.

He summarized the report as a cover-up.

“There’s a history in this country of making the exploited feel that they should be thankful with what they have; that’s what this study does,” Vogel said Monday.

But Les Hyder, journalism department chair and a committee member of the IBHE Faculty Advisory Committee, which created the report, felt some of the expectations for the report may have been unclear.

“The Faculty Advisory Committee felt we had addressed the issues of concern. We felt the solution is the responsibility of the individual colleges and universities,” Hyder said Monday.

The UPI has not approved the report, and as a result the IBHE will readdress the issues and present another report later this year.

“These issues are complex, to reach a consensus at the different colleges and universities will take time,” Hyder said. “We’re hoping to have a complete report by the end of the semester.”

However, Vogel said if the union is not satisfied with that report, they “will go back to the state legislature and mandate a new study until we get one we are happy with.”

The report was the result of the House Joint Resolution 19, a product of the 91st Illinois General Assembly, which asked the Illinois Board of Higher Education to review the growing dependence on part-time and non-tenure-track faculty in Illinois colleges and universities.

At Eastern, part-time faculty usually don’t receive the same benefits as full-time faculty, and usually don’t have an office to themselves, David Radavich, English professor and president of Eastern’s chapter of UPI, has said.

But Radavich declined to comment on Vogel’s response to the report, because he said he was not informed enough about it.