Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 24, 1993 TAG: 9312100274
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DONALD N. DEDMON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Too often, the popular perception is that professors work far too few hours per week and that they are protected by a tenure system which guarantees lifelong employment irrespective of performance and productivity. Thus, when budget cuts loom, there's a tendency to crack down on those "lazy" professors to make them teach more in order to earn their salaries.
I believe that criticism of faculty workloads is often overdrawn, inaccurate and in the case of Radford University, completely misplaced.
Jacob Neuser, a faculty member from the University of South Florida, recently concluded: "Professors who miss class don't get fired. Professors who come to classes unprepared don't get fired. Professors who don't hold office hours for students, who don't share in their department's work, who won't even talk to their colleagues from one month to the next, don't get fired. Unless budget cuts intervene, everyone get across-the-board raises every year, no matter what they do - or more to the point - what they don't do."
Journalist Charles J. Sykes, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, wrote an angry book entitled "Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education." Although Sykes' inflammatory rhetoric (chapter titles include "The Crucifixion of Teaching") is meant to irritate, it instead muddies the waters and contributes to stereotypes of academics as "pointy-headed professors."
Sykes is not alone in revealing the warts of academe. There is Roger Kimball's 1990 book, "Tenured Radicals," Bruce Wilshire's book from the same year, "The Moral Collapse of the University," and the late Allan Bloom's best- selling and now world-famous "The Closing of the American Mind," which is subtitled "How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students."
Added to the charge that professors do too little teaching, and that they are protected in doing so by an outmoded system of tenure, is a national chorus decrying that professors neglect undergraduate students and their instruction in order to focus on graduate instruction and the research that accompanies it.
Not only have professors abdicated their instructional responsibilities to undergraduate instruction; they also have turned over those responsibilities to graduate students-who often have little or no teacher's training and who may not even speak understandable English.
Recent studies on the extensive use of graduate teaching assistants and their preparation for the college classroom (or lack thereof) provide some rather shocking and highly embarrassing insights into the modern university's use of teaching assistants. One study found that about one-fourth of total student credit-hours are taught by graduate teaching assistants. And that may actually be a conservative estimate. When graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley went on strike in the spring of 1989, 75 percent of the courses completely shut down.
Everyone knows that the past few decades have seen a shift toward emphasizing research at many of our nation's so-called "leading" institutions. Some professors, indeed, regard their students as merely obstacles to their own intellectual hobbies and pursuits. As former Stanford professor John Kaplan once observed, "Professors feel that students are the crabgrass on the lawn of academia."
Research, in and of itself, should not be criticized. The role of university research has a long and distinguished history. There have been innumerable ideas, decisions, insights and solutions made possible because of research at institutes of higher education. Where would we be without the Salks, Sabins and DeBakeys? Instead, higher-education leaders and the public should be concerned with what, for some, has become a smokescreen for teaching less in the name of research.
Here at Radford University, however, we have our priorities straight. The education of students is of primary importance. Considering all full-time faculty without administrative assignments, a recent survey showed that 70.5 percent of Radford's faculty taught 12 credit hours or more and 78.2 percent taught 10 hours or more. In terms of classroom contact hours, I would put Radford University's productivity up against that of any university in the commonwealth and, quite likely, that of any other university in the nation. Our professors are working hard in the classroom, and outside the classroom they are working at the right things: primarily instruction-related activities such as classroom preparation, meaningful counseling, further learning and academic advising.
Here at Radford, all professors - irrespective of rank, department or chaired status - teach undergraduate students, with no particular premium on teaching graduate students. Undergraduate instruction here has not been "back- burnered" in favor of anything else.
I don't find criticism of tenure to be particularly valid at Radford, either. Tenure is granted here only after a long probationary period, with very few exceptions. And the first requirement for the receiving of tenure is a positive judgment of teaching effectiveness. I believe that tenure is unquestionably essential to a strong, healthy university. I support it without apology.
As for teaching at the undergraduate level, graduate teaching assistants at Radford are responsible for a mere 4.2 percent of our total instructional offerings. If our GTAs went on strike, this university would carry on just fine.
When it comes to Radford, the lament of the critics is misplaced. We are a highly productive university in every sense of the word. At Radford, the teaching function comes first, and this priority is reflected in all the other things that we do.
Universities have always been criticized, although more so of late. "People are cranky because the country is not doing well," says Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University. "The economy is lagging, unemployment is up, we are not beating the Japanese, we are not conquering drugs, crime or homelessness. So everybody is upset. In such an atmosphere, of course, people are bound to be critical."
Our problems are many, but shortchanging education will not correct them. We must not let our public lose sight of the fact that higher education is the best investment the commonwealth of Virginia can make.
\ Donald N. Dedmon is in his 22nd year as president of Radford University. This is adapted from his remarks Friday at the university's annual convocation.
by CNB