Ohio University currently does not require its professors to teach a minimum number of hours.

A recent ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court lowers the chances that it ever will.

The case that brought the issue before the Court began with a 1993 law requiring the Ohio Board of Regents to work with each state university to draw guidelines that would ensure a 10 percent increase in the teaching loads of college professors.

According to the bill, the law was changed to "restore the reductions (in teaching time) experienced over the past decade."

The following year, Central State University in Wilberforce created a new teaching policy requiring professors to teach 36 to 40 hours per year and have at least 10 office hours per week, and informed the professors' union that this policy would not be subject to collective bargaining.

In 1995, the Central State chapter of the American Association of University Professors, the professors' union, sued the university, saying the law was unconstitutional because it denied professors the right to bargain over workloads. State law guarantees this right to other public employees.

Last month, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed, saying though the state has an interest in increasing the time professors spend teaching, it could not limit collective bargaining to do so.

Justice Alice Robie Resnick, writing for the majority in a 4-3 decision, said the court "can conclude with confidence that there is not a shred of evidence in the entire record which links collective bargaining with the decline in teaching in the past decade."

The ruling does not immediately affect Ohio University because it does not have minimum teaching requirements or collective bargaining with professors, Faculty Senate chairman Louis Wright said.

The university should not try to impose teaching requirements because balancing lectures, labs, curriculum planning and research with other demands would make it difficult to write a fair policy, he said.

Teaching loads vary by school, but most professors teach two to four classes per quarter, said OU Provost Sharon Brehm in an e-mail message.

Geography professor Timothy Anderson said teaching loads should not be regulated because this would restrict a professor's ability to make decisions about his academic work.

-Heather Skeeles contributed to this story.