How the “Publish or Perish” Trend in Higher Education Negatively Impacts Undergraduate Students
September 25th, 2009Earlier 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.
