Earlier in the month, one of my colleagues sent me a link to an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, titled “The Ugly Secret Why Tuition Costs a Fortune.” The article notes that in today’s somewhat unstable economy, the cost of most consumer goods are falling, yet higher education has somehow managed to insulate itself from this fundamental economic trend. Examining why this has been the case, the article pulls from evidence found in Mark Bauerlein’s paper published by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, “Professors on the Production Line, Students On Their Own.”
Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University, offers an eye-opening explanation of a starting trend in academia: the “publish or perish” dilemma facing young professors hoping to be hired or veteran faculty members on the path to tenure. According to Bauerlein, between 1980 and 2006, William Faulkner garnered some “3,584 books, chapters, dissertations, articles, notes, reviews, and editions.” In the same time period, Charles Dickens elicited 3,437 studies. While there can be little question that scholarly critical works on these authors and others are worthwhile for full understanding of their works, one must begin to question how many works on any one author are required before the topic becomes “overdone.” Bauerlein cites that the demand for a new book in the English literature area rarely exceeds 300 copies.
Interestingly, as Bauerlein points out, during the most prolific decades for scholarly publications, there were no outside forces demanding that they be produced; few individuals outside of academia were asking for more such works. In an interesting market twist, however, fewer institutions and individuals are purchasing the works that are being produced on such a vast scale. Quoting remarks from the director of Yale University Press, Bauerlein notes, “’Yale and every other university press in America ha[ve] seen the sale of scholarly monographs…decline by two-thirds.’” Even more eye-opening are findings that point to the fact that few college faculty are taking the time to review the vast number of works produced every year by their colleagues. In the humanities disciplines, this may be the case because there is nothing new to glean from such works and there is no risk to the up-and-coming professor of falling behind in the field if he does not read them.
Bauerlein poses an intriguing question: has “the whole enterprise [of scholarly works produced by faculty] reached a saturation point?” Based on the dwindling consumer interest in such works, it would seem that this is the case which begs the question, “Why are faculty members continuing to produce such works?” In any other industry, if consumer interest dwindles, especially to the point that it has in the case of scholarly works in the humanities, most manufacturers would cease to continue to produce the product. The answer, according to Bauerlein, is that “publication is a fact of survival, the foot in the door and the seat at the table.”
Institutions of higher education across the country continue to require evidence of publications for hiring and tenure decisions. This in turn compels faculty and candidates to strive to produce scholarly works to pad their curriculum vitas. This sequence of events creates a dilemma not just for the faculty wishing to be hired or tenured, but also for their students. Because faculty members are busy producing scholarly works that few will purchase and review, many of their undergraduate courses are handed to graduate teaching assistants (TAs) to manage. Interestingly, Bauerlein found many of the courses being sloughed off to TAs are those most fundamental to the success of undergraduate students, including freshman composition and sociology courses. Undergraduates often find themselves crammed into a stadium seating classroom with 50 to 300 other students and will have little opportunity to interact with the faculty assigned to teach the course.
Bauerlein also found that few students have any contact with their professors outside of the classroom. He chastises faculty and the higher education industry as a whole for allowing the notion that learning can take place outside of the classroom to fall by the wayside. According to the 2007 NSSE survey of freshman students, 37 percent indicated that they “never discussed ideas from readings or classes with faculty members outside of class” and only 41 percent indicated that they did this “sometimes.” The lack of interaction between students and professors outside the classroom leads to a mentality in which students believe learning takes place only in the classroom, perhaps hindering their motivation to pursue external resources to enhance their own learning. John Zmirak, the author of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, suggests that parents examine the ratio of graduate assistants teaching these introductory courses in the humanities versus full-time professors.
In an interesting contrast to the statistics offered above, however, on the 2007 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, 79 percent of respondents indicated that they were very satisfied with their professors’ levels of interactions. Even with their perceived satisfaction, however, Bauerlein suggests that undergraduate students are suffering from the “publish or perish” mentality at most colleges and universities. Bauerlein states that “the absence of teachers inside the classroom has become normalized. Student’s don’t even know they’re being shortchanged.”
One of the ironies of this article is the fact that Bauerlein did not make a comparison between contact classes and online classes. There have been many studies in retention literature noting that the academic and social engagement of a student influences that student’s persistence (graduation) in college (Tinto, 1975). Institutions with online programs have focused on professor/student interaction because of the fact that the face-to-face contact is unavailable. While I would assume that the NSSE results for online students would not demonstrate a high level of involvement with professors outside the class, perhaps the interaction would be higher. Approximately 14 colleges (including APUS) have implemented the Community of Inquiry student survey, a survey specifically designed to measure professor/student interactivity. According to data from the Sloan Consortium and Eduventures, community colleges and for-profit colleges and universities teach approximately two-thirds of all online classes. At many of those institutions, tenure is not offered. But, going back to the title of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article “The Ugly Secret Why Tuition Costs a Fortune,” these institutions are not our most expensive. Zmirak suggests that teaching capabilities be taken into consideration for tenure decisions and that the research in the humanities be left to the 300 people who buy the books. Bauerlein and Zmirak have a point; institutions dependent on tuition seem to understand what the student customer needs. I wonder if the current funding crisis will instigate the other institutions to evaluate their practice(s).
