Op-Ed from Steven Pearlstein in the WaPo:
… While faculty critics have made sport of pointing out the proliferation of assistant provosts or the soaring salaries of college presidents, these don’t represent most new spending. What does is the growth in the number and pay of non-teaching professionals in areas such as academic and psychological counseling, security, information technology, fundraising, accreditation and government compliance.
… Friday has become the new Saturday on college campuses as many students shun classes, and professors have been all too willing to accommodate them. At Mason, utilization of classroom space during prime daytime hours on Thursdays is 68 percent; on Fridays, it is 38 percent. That’s a bit above the national average, according to estimates from Sightlines, a facilities consulting firm.
A few universities have taken a shot at running on a 12-month calendar or returning Friday to the workweek, but nationally such ideas have gained little traction. Trachtenberg isn’t surprised: “Presidents who spend time fighting with faculty over things like this don’t last long.”
… Teaching loads at research universities have declined almost 50 percent in the past 30 years, according to data compiled for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. This doesn’t necessarily mean professors aren’t working as hard — surveys show they’re working harder and under more pressure than ever. Rather, says former Mason provost Peter Stearns, it reflects a deliberate shift in focus as universities compete for big-name professors by promising lighter teaching loads and more time for research. … Unfortunately, much of that work has little intellectual or social impact. … “For someone just to write a paper that nobody is going to read — we can’t afford that anymore,” says Brit Kirwan, a former chancellor of the University of Maryland.
… Cheaper, better general education: Roughly a third of the courses undergraduates take fulfill general-education requirements meant to ensure that all students receive a well-rounded education. Universities have gotten more serious about requiring a minimum proficiency in writing and quantitative reasoning, but the rest of general education tends to be an intellectual cop-out. Students are presented with dozens of courses in four or five broad categories and are told to choose two or three from each. Many are large introductory lecture courses (Everything 101) that were designed primarily to provide foundational knowledge for students majoring in that subject, rather than an intellectually stimulating exploration of a discipline. Most of the rest reflect the specific research interests of professors. …
Good Op-Ed
some of those issues have been floated at the UO (particularly Gen Ed) with the usual institutional inertia quickly damping them out.
The point about reforming “published research” is interesting, one I strongly agree with, but one that is very unlikely to gain traction.
Most of this stuff wouldn’t save money or would arguably be unwise to do. For example, running a full summer program would require that ALL students follow the four-term schedule — otherwise you’d have impossibly higher costs running two parallel schedules. So no summer jobs for students, no internships, etc. At UO, the summer is pretty busy — in my department, all the courses that are offered are ones where a profit is made — in other words, saving as much money as possible. If we could make more money by offering more summer courses, we would have been doing it years ago.
The quotations from people like Richard Vedder, who is a hack economist imho, and Cheryl Twigg, who makes some very questionable assertions about the efficacy of the programs she is selling, do not impress me. (I have checked out claims made about cost savings and improved learning in a program at another university in my field with the department head there, and he told me they are bullshit.)
I have no opinion about research in fields outside my own field in the natural sciences. I don’t think de-emphasizing research in the sciences is a good idea. (Emphasizing teaching more especially of undergraduates would probably be a good idea, especially for certain people who get out of it not to do research, but to do other make-work types of things.) De-emphasizing science research would not save nearly as much money as the author may think — he clearly doesn’t understand much about public university finance even after 4 years at George Mason.
I also don’t care for his sneering attitude about academia and professors. I don’t know if it’s justified in his field (journalism?) but I certainly don’t feel that way about the colleagues I know best. I might have some pretty sharp differences with them at times, but I certainly don’t regard them with contempt. Well, not most of the time.
well I agree that much of these suggestions don’t result in actual cost savings, I do think there are larger issues:
1) Rethinking the balance between research and teaching in ways that better integrate research into teaching
2) Reforming Gen. Ed
3) Actually using IT in a sensible and scaleable way
I don’t think he has the kinds of things in mind that you probably do.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/washington-post-suffers-85-earnings-drop-163189
The financial health of UO has been fantastic, it’s only state support that has dropped a bit over the years. Out of state tuition has more than covered the difference. Even after adjusting for inflation, UO is able to spend far more this year than ever before. Making out of staters (students and alumni) pay for all of these new buildings is just icing on the cake.
Surprisingly, an op-ed that couldn’t see much value in research turns out to have been poorly researched:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/30/four-tough-things-columnists-should-do-before-writing-about-universities/