Insular Academic Requirements

Everyone loves the big time especially in higher education. Big time sports, famous professors, inspiring presidents, and world renown experts. Every week there are countless examples of this or that professor being a guest on NPR, CNN, Fox, or the like. This has created a demand in higher education to have experts ready and willing to share their knowledge by writing books, articles, presenting at conferences and if you make the big time, sharing your vast knowledge on television and radio. But this has also created a huge, bloated pink elephant; even though most colleges and universities are in the business of educating young adults, undergraduate education, the requirements for employment that professors must attain prepares them to teach graduate students and conduct non-classroom research.

Consider the following:

Higher education in the United States is still the envy of the world so why am I questioning these insular requirements? Why change?

First of all I am not questioning higher education education at elite institutions; colleges and universities with endowments that range from hundreds of millions to billions and have an endowment per student of $50,000 or more can keep on doing what they want (for many, $50k is low). To give some context on super-large endowments, a recent article listed endowments at over 800 institutions for 2011-2012 and the first 71 had endowments over one-billion dollars and the first 145 had endowments over $500 million.

I am questioning the hundreds and hundreds of institutions that were created and still educate undergraduates as their core mission, are publically funded, and in my opinion, have lost their educational focus in the desire to compete nationally and internationally. I also question institutions that are so large they stifle competition because of the de facto monopoly they create in their locality (example; Arizona State University).

To look at this higher education perplexity I will look at the three major universities in Arizona; The University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University, and Arizona State University. These three institutions have a combined enrollment of around 137, 400 (feel free to look at Wikipedia); of this, around 19% are graduate students (UA has the highest percentage, NAU the least, with ASU in the middle).

Because 19% of the student population are graduate students, an equivalent percentage of the full-time teaching staff, because of the needs of the students, should focus on graduate studies; write books, publish countless articles, present at conferences, and conduct lots of non-classroom research to enhance their notoriety and that of the institution. In addition these institutions should have non-teaching, professional researchers to conduct and assist with important research that occurs. These staff members should not be part of the teaching staff because they are not participating in the education of adult students.

With graduate education taken care of that leaves 81% of the full-time teaching staff to focus on undergraduate education. Do 81% of the professors at UA, NAU, and ASU focus on what (young) adult learners need to develop as students, academics, and citizens? Do 81% of the professors focus on providing engaging learning environments for students to be challenged and individualize each student’s education?  I doubt it. I am sure that all of the full-time teaching staff, I am not talking about adjuncts, all have the same requirements; curriculum vitaes that are fit to teach graduate education with the threat of publish or perish always looming over them.

Da Capo; so why am I bringing this up if colleges and universities in the US are still the envy of the world? I ask because in the last ten-years so much has changed in higher education that state and private institutions cannot continue to operate like they have without changing and this includes undergraduate education.

Undergraduate education dominates most institutions, especially public. Because of the pressure to improve student learning outcomes especially for students under-25, why not have have different requirements for faculty members who teach graduate students and different requirements for those who teach undergraduate students? Why do should people who teach undergraduates have to write books, articles, and publish or perish just to have a job where the most important thing they do, according to the mission of their institutions, is to educate young adults and prepare them to be responsible citizens?

I bring this all up because for whatever reason my own career has always focused on undergraduate education and there is a big difference between professors who excel at churning out PhD’s and those who can help entry-level students improve their college level writing. If institutions, especially public ones do not start changing the way they educated under-25’s then the government will step in and start changing things for them.