Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 27, 1993 TAG: 9309270141
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANNE GEARAN Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But is there a way to reliably measure what professors do? Can taxpayers expect a certain return on their investment in state-funded universities or even gauge what form that return might take?
As higher education budgets shrink, there is a debate on and off campuses over accountability. The debate derives in part from criticism over faculty workloads and the suggestion that some faculty may abuse university time or shortchange students by pursuing individual projects outside the classroom.
A recent analysis of teaching loads at eight Virginia schools showed that faculty at four of the schools were teaching fewer than three classes a semester. The University of Virginia had the lightest load for full-time faculty, with an average of fewer than two classes a semester.
Besides teaching loads, measures of faculty productivity might include the quantity and quality of research and the success of students.
"That's applying the factory model to higher education," said Robert Boughner, a classics professor at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg who has studied the question of faculty productivity. "Can education be measured in so many widgets?"
Boughner and many others argue professors' work in and out of the classroom yields far-reaching but intangible benefits for the rest of society.
"Those things that are quantifiable, like time, may not be a good measure of what kind of education you are buying; but it is quantifiable, so people tend to concentrate on it," said Iris Molotsky, spokeswoman for the American Association of University Professors.
Boughner and other Virginia professors provided sample schedules showing the amount of time they spend in and out of class. Boughner's schedule for a recent day included time teaching Latin and Greek, reading material associated with those classes, tending to department business, attending a meeting, grading exams and teaching a special one-time seminar at night.
Other professors included time in laboratories, meeting with other faculty or reading in the library.
"It's tough to analyze their time and say whether they are using it well," said Kathleen Purdy, a Portland, Ore., management consultant who also has taught at several universities.
"When we talk about the cost of higher education, rather than analyze time we should look at their output," she said. "Is it more publications and conferences and outside consulting work, or are they changing their classes every semester, adding to it and learning new methods of teaching?"
More than 70 percent of America's university professors work for public institutions, and it is fair for taxpayers to ask what benefit they get from paying faculty salaries, Molotsky of the professors' association said.
The association is studying professors' accountability and expects to issue a report by the end of the year on ways campuses and the public might measure faculty performance, she said.
"Professors ought to be accountable, and they are accountable in a variety of ways," Molotsky said.
Professors must pass muster with their peers, either to receive promotions or win publication or notice for research work, she said. Outsiders are not qualified to determine if specialized research is worthwhile, she and others said.
"An individual might work and work, and at the end of two or three years, he produces one or two articles that have no impact at that point. By that factory model, that person has wasted his time, and the state has wasted its money," Boughner said.
"Yet those very articles might - 10, 12, 15 years down the road - enlighten someone else, a connection is made, and we have an entirely new insight on some particular thing that was heretofore in the dark," he said.
Barbara Nolan, vice provost and an English professor at the University of Virginia, said she believes it is easier to measure faculty effectiveness outside the classroom.
"Research almost always issues in publication in books, articles or - in the sciences - in published papers or in invention," she said.
"So you can look year by year at faculty members' output in terms of publications, and you can tell very easily by looking at the places where they are published . . . and tell how high-quality the work is. I don't think you should count the pages, although that is done at some universities."
by CNB