KSUFA’s current membership dues is 0.8% of base academic year salary. To become compliant with our affiliation dues obligations to AAUP, we would have to immediately ask our members to raise dues to 1% of base academic year salary. As affiliation dues to Ohio Conference AAUP and AAUP national increase, we would need to increase dues periodically – perhaps as high as 1.2%-1.5% of base salary over the next 10 years – in order to continue to provide the same level of representation to Kent State’s faculty that we currently do.
Were KSUFA to disaffiliate from AAUP, not only would we not have to increase dues, we would be able to contemplate reducing our membership dues. Currently, several AAUP Chapters in Ohio have membership dues set at 0.75% of base academic year salary and at least one (Wright State) has dues set at 0.7%.
At a meeting on October 30th and again in an email dated December 3, 2024, we invited AAUP leaders to submit a statement that we could share with our members on what they perceive to be the benefits to our union of staying affiliated with AAUP and getting back into good standing with respect to our affiliation dues. Although they indicated at the October 30th meeting that AAUP would develop such a statement in “the next few weeks,” we have received nothing from them to date. If and when we do, we will pass it along to you and post it on our website in the form in which we receive it. We also indicated to the AAUP leaders both at the October 30th meeting and in the December 3rd email that we would be happy to invite a representative from AAUP national to attend one of the virtual townhall meetings scheduled for January 28th and February 5th to answer questions and address concerns from our members. They have indicated that they plan to attend the February 5th townhall. Sara Kilpatrick, Executive Director for Ohio Conference AAUP will also attend that meeting.
At the current affiliation dues rate and given our current membership, getting into compliance with our AAUP national affiliation dues would cost our union approximately an additional $65,000 this fiscal year alone. That amount would almost certainly go up every subsequent year given that AAUP national’s affiliation dues increase each year by a percentage pegged to inflation. Since 2020, those annual increases have averaged roughly 3.45%. Moreover, we would almost certainly be expected to pay back the arrears in our affiliation dues going back to 2020 (currently over $345,000 and increasing every quarter).
Although KSUFA receives surprisingly little directly from AAUP national apart from a brand name, there is value in that brand. AAUP is widely known and respected in academia and beyond as an organization committed to defending academic freedom, protecting tenure, defending faculty governance, and more generally promoting the interests of faculty and institutions of higher education. Were we to disaffiliate, KSUFA would have to find another way to continue to support these activities on a national level.
Given that AAUP national and Ohio Conference AAUP (OCAAUP) are a package deal, we would also lose our affiliation with OCAAUP. We, like all Ohio faculty, benefit greatly from the lobbying power of OCAAUP. They were instrumental in the 2011 fight against SB 5 – a law that would have completely eliminated our collective bargaining rights – and have played an important role in the recent fight against SB 83. We expect them to play a similarly important role in the upcoming fight against the successor to SB 83 (SB 1 / HB 6). Were we to disaffiliate from AAUP, KSUFA would have to find another way to support the state level activities of OCAAUP.
A more detailed answer question can be found in Vol. 3: The pros and cons of disaffiliating from AAUP of the “Our Kent State Faculty Union and AAUP” series.
