Frederick M. Hess & Richard B. Keck (Manhattan Institute), It’s Time for College Professors to Teach:
Higher education is plagued by concerns about the return on investment of a four-year degree, low rates of degree completion, and the mental and emotional health of students. A factor in all these concerns is the frustrating reality that, at far too many of the nation’s 2,000 four-year colleges, the work of teaching and mentoring is only a secondary concern. This has had unfortunate consequences for costs, instruction, and campus culture. It also presents an opportunity for governing boards and public officials to step up.
It is no coincidence that the nation’s most expensive colleges are those at which faculty teach just two to four courses per year (amounting to three or six hours a week of classroom time each semester). At these institutions, faculty devote the lion’s share of their time to research, bureaucratic duties, and chasing grants. In a burst of candor, John McGreevy, provost at Notre Dame, revealed that his institution boasts whole departments in which the faculty norm is a 1-1 teaching load (that is, teaching one three-hour class in the fall and one in the spring). Indeed, McGreevy notes that teaching loads at the leading colleges have shrunk precisely because colleges compete for faculty by promising that they’ll teach less.
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