Second Class Employee - Academic Specialist Michigan State University Employee Review

As typical for a large university, there is a large separation between tenured faculty and everyone else. And to make things worse, most MSU positions are lower-ranked staff, academic specialists, and fixed-term professors. There is almost no room to advance between classifications, but many new faculty and staff don’t understand MSU’s many employment classifications until they are locked into a position. And then because of downward pressure on creating new tenure lines, faculty governance is limited to the lucky few who received tenure lines long ago, but are really willing to look out for those who weren’t so lucky.