Are market forces about to fundamentally alter the traditional relationships of professors to their students, to their departments and universities, and even to their subject matter? This issue was recently raised at a round-table conference sponsored by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.
For the faculty, everything today is “publish or perish.” Research is the key to tenure and promotions. The teaching of undergraduates might be the primary mission of academia, but it often gets short shrift in a faculty-dominated universe.
Yet to administrators, money is the motivation, and enrollment paves the way to higher state subsidies and increasing tuition revenues. To attract students, universities must offer at least the appearance of a quality undergraduate education.
One solution to the widening gulf between faculty and administration discussed at the conference was to embrace the tendency toward specialization. The catalyst for the discussion was a presentation by Penn State University senior lecturer Dirk Mateer, a self-described “large-class teaching specialist.”
Mateer is hardly the stereotype of the nontenured lecturer — a graduate student, part-time adjunct, or itinerant lecturer hoping to land a tenured position somewhere else. Such teachers usually share neither job security nor high pay with their tenured colleagues, and have little influence within departments.
Mateer, however, was lured to Penn State’s economics department from a tenured position at another college by the offer of a high salary and a long-term contract. He said that, by teaching introductory economics to more than 1,000 students per semester, he bridges the gap between the opposing priorities of tenured faculty and administration.
His presence frees tenured researchers from the time-consuming act of high-volume teaching of introductory courses so they can advance knowledge and bring prestige to the school, and so they can also intensively mentor more advanced students. Administrators gain as well — they can pack the lecture halls with tuition-paying students and thereby fill the coffers.
He said his job requires unique presentation skills and the ability to manage others. He provides value to the school — he enables it to “scale up” and take advantage of employing low-cost graduate and undergraduate assistants to tutor and grade papers.
Using the incentives of high pay, long-term contracts, and freedom from the pressure to publish, the economics department at Penn State has attracted eight other teaching specialists. Mateer cited another reason for the university to hire them — teaching specialists who do not meet expectations can be easily eliminated at the end of their contracts, unlike their tenured counterparts.
While the practical benefits of such specialization appear to be many, other participants raised objections and caveats, both pragmatic and emotional. David Mulroy, a classicist from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, said, for example, that this scenario conflicts with the ideal of a professor he received when entering the profession — a researcher on the cutting edge of knowledge and an educator who can “reach out to young students” and give a “riveting lecture.”
Mulroy’s comment raised the question: Is it possible that this traditional ideal of the professor on the way out for the sake of greater efficiency? Or is there some inherently noble quality in the ideal that is worth preserving, despite the benefits of specialization?
The discussion raised other questions: Should teaching specialists receive parity with their research-focused colleagues in rewards, recognition and influence? After all, in many cases they are paying the bills for their research-oriented colleagues. If the teaching specialist emerges as a new force in higher education, will intellectual stagnancy result? And is tenure, as the supposed safeguard of academic freedom, an inferior instrument to more efficient long-term, renewable contracts?
All of these issues are being faced in real-life academia. Some schools are dropping the research requirement for professors, in order to focus on their teaching mission. The use of contingent faculty is rapidly increasing. And the inefficiencies of tenure are coming under the scrutiny of higher education officials.
Division of labor has greatly contributed to the enormous improvement in living standards worldwide. Perhaps it can do the same for undergraduate education. Yet, rarely does such change occur without some loss. In this case, the loss might be a scholarly ideal, which, at its best, is greater than the sum of its parts. In light of economic realities, however, that ideal might now be a luxury beyond the means of all but a few.
Jay Schalin is a senior writer for the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.