Tuition costs for higher education double the pace of inflation, while more Americans believe higher ed is no longer affordable and question whether it is even a good value. At the same time, taxpayers are on the hook for ever increasing costs to support public universities. What should we do to bring costs back in line, while protecting university research and deliver more value for the cost of tuition at the same time? And given the strong incentives to maintain the status quo, what can we do?
A distinguished economics professor at Ohio University may have an answer. Dr. Richard Vedder studied faculty activities at the University of Texas at Austin and found that tuition rates could be lowered by doing one thing: Get more faculty to spend more time in the classroom. This would also reduce taxpayer liability to support the public university by getting more productivity out of university faculty, many of whom make near $250,000 apiece in salary plus benefits.
The Center for College Affordability and Productivity conducted the study titled “Faculty Productivity and Costs at The University of Texas at Austin.” The study assesses faculty productivity at UT-Austin in terms of both research and teaching by delving into the data on faculty compensation, teaching loads and external research grant awards released by the University of Texas system.
“Our analysis shows that there is clearly room for improvement in terms of faculty productivity at UT Austin,” said Dr. Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and a co-author of the study. “Simply by having faculty teach more students or courses, students and taxpayers will benefit significantly by reduced university costs.”
Dr. Vedder says the findings are preliminary, but revealing:
- 20 percent of UT Austin faculty are teaching 57 percent of student credit hours. They also generate 18 percent of the campus’s research funding. This suggests that these faculty are not jeopardizing their status as researchers by assuming such a high level of teaching responsibility.
- Conversely, the least productive 20 percent of faculty teach only 2 percent of all student credit hours and generate a disproportionately smaller percentage of external research funding than do other segments of the faculty.
- Research grant funds go almost entirely (99.8 percent) to a small minority (20 percent) of the faculty; only 2 percent of the faculty conduct 57 percent of funded research.
- Non-tenured track faculty teach a majority of undergraduate enrollments and a surprising 31 percent of graduate enrollments.
- The most active researchers teach nearly the average of all faculty; increasing teaching loads of others would trivially impact outside research support.
Dr. Vedder’s report comes as Texas Gov. Rick Perry has called for the state’s public university system to create a $10,000 degree, a reform that Vedder described as “very doable.” He stressed that the $10k degree is attainable only if university faculty behave as professionals do in other fields; in other words, not limiting themselves to working in fields that merely interest them, but can also provide some benefit to students. “Publish or perish” could become the career path of the past, replaced by a stronger emphasis on time spent in the classroom.
Dr. Vedder spoke to bloggers about the study on a conference call today, organized by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, of which Dr. Vedder is a senior fellow.
Update: Here is a link to the full study.
As an adjunct faculty at a community college, I gasp at the thought that full-time faculty at a public university are pulling down $250,000 a year in salary and benefits. I taught three sections this last semester (roughly equivalent a 3/4 time job, on top of my full-time job as a software engineer). They paid me just under $8,000 to do that. Full-time faculty teach five sections–which would be about $26,250 a year, if I were doing that. (Of course, no benefits–why should a community college treat its employees as well as Wal-Mart?) I am told by the dean that our community college is extraordinarily generous in how well they pay adjuncts.
As I am sure you know you are part of a two tier/two class teaching system. It is the peon wages they pay the adjunct professors that allows them to pay the tenure track premadonnas the big bucks. Of course we all also know that only a fraction of those tenure track professors are really producing enough quality research that they are indeed worth the expense. What is missing in the four year college and university enviroment is independence from the tit of big Government. If we cut the money out the system will quickly right itself. If we continue as we are we will see that much of the reason the Obama Administration wanted to take over the student loan industry was so they could find yet another way to loot the US Treasury.
” the least productive 20 percent of faculty teach only 2 percent of all student credit hours ”
That is probably the older profs usually, who are “enjoying” the perquisites of tenure with its cloak of invulnerability. I have seen them driven off when the administration increases teaching loads incrementally. They view teaching as punishment, while viewing punishing fellow faculty members by gossip, backstabbing and interference as their prime job responsibility.
” the least productive 20 percent of faculty teach only 2 percent of all student credit hours ”
I was thinking this was a case of handling the low-achieving faculty members: by assigning them fewer students to teach they would be harming fewer students.
X Contra has the better idea: this is the result of older profs who are coasting once they have tenure.
The more I read things like this, the more I appreciate my old alma mater. It was not a research institution, but it did insist on having all teaching done by professors–not GAs who could barely speak English.
I’m adjunct faculty at a number of colleges and universities in the DC Metro region. For the last couple years I have been teaching double the course load of full faculty for on average 1/5 of the salary, and no benefits. I see no reason why full faculty shouldn’t be teaching more classes/students/sections.
No surprises here. I hope that Dr. Vedder starts his car by remote control and he might want to consider hiring a grad assistant as a food-taster. His colleagues will definitely not be pleased. Universities not only don’t expect their (tenured) faculty to actually teach but they remain some of the most overly “administered” entities on earth. How many Assistant Deans, Deputy Proctors or Vice-Presidents for Paperclip Procurement does a university need? In the humid hot-house of academia nothing grows faster than academic bureucracy. Combine that with the reluctance of teachers to actually teach and you have the perfect blueprint for a dysfunctional organization.
Vedder is a crackpot.
The data only shows that UT offers two kinds of courses: 1)large introductory lecture courses and 2) small seminar courses.
You take more of the first kind as a freshman and sophomore, and as a junior or senior you take more of the second kind. Don’t forget that UT educates grad students as well whose courses are smaller (remember, UT is a university, not a community college).
Faculty teach both kinds of courses on a rotating basis. The data reflects only one year. It doesn’t paint the whole picture.
Without having waded through all of the report, I would just say that the job of a major, Tier 1 goes beyond giving away degrees as cheaply as possible. That is what the lesser institutions are for.
Trying to make the University of Texas a cheap diploma mill rather than a major research university is absurd beyond belief.
These authors are trying to fit UT into the mold of their, lesser, institutions.
Governor Perry will destroy our Texas Tier 1 universities if he pursues this.
It’s laughable. Do not try to say that Large Urban Research Universities — Tier 1 — are the holy grail. Talk about inefficient allocation of $$. This is why they talk about it as a “bubble” or a false value.
Education results suffer from three fronts
1. Government education subsidies.
2. Social justice agenda.
3. Lowered entrance criteria and academic standards producing 1000′s upon 1000′s of deadbeat students lacking the capacities needed for traditional higher education and, who at best, would be served better in vocational training schools.
For decades it has been a systemic philosophy of quantity of students over quality academics, in higher education. I would speculate that to some degree, this has taken its toll on some good professors (however many left) over time. Higher education the last several decades, has become no less corrupted than the government, the private business and industrial sectors and the people of the nation.
Ditto to Mr. Cramer and JEM. I complain a lot, but compared to those gentlemen (-man/lady?) it sounds like I’m fortunate.
I teach 14-16 courses per calendar year (i.e., between double and triple the typical tenure track–with the higher rated schools requiring less teaching). My gross pay (like Mr. Cramer and JEM, sans benefits) is around 50K. Some changes are coming that will probably see that decrease by 5-10K.
There is no method or logic to the payment of adjuncts. The course that requires the most work, and represents the highest-level teaching, is the course that pays the least. Fortunately one of my schools pays about half again as much as the other.
T.T. Thomas has it right. While Dr. Vedder’s suggestion should be taken seriously, I wonder how many schools would be willing to address Thomas’s point #2. It is telling that just a few years ago the tipping point came where the number of administrators at our schools now outnumber the faculty. Just how many Deans of Diversity, Offices of Sustainability, and Centers for Women, LBGT, various ethnic minorities, etc, does a school really need? You could close most of them without a negative impact on education. Do the schools have the guts to do so?
The answer to your perhaps rhetorical question would be a resounding “NO’.
Why should a degree cost $10,000?????
The cost of a degree — as a proof, a certificate of having a level of knowledge in a field — should be much less. No more than the cost of a series of on-line tests.
A few hundred dollars!
Jen and southern plainsman are right. UTA has two main type of classes: the three hundred student prep classes, and the smaller seminar classes. UTA is obliged to accept the top ten percent of any high school. These kids may, or may not, have college level skills. UTA used to have a great deal of discretion in building its student body. The large classes worked like weedouts- only 1/3 to 2/3 would survive. Austin was built on having a reservoir of partially credited, fairly bright kids at loose ends. Now, with top 10%- first off, a great many bookstores have closed, so you know the poor kids aren’t as interested in their own pursuits. And well, they all pass the grind classes, but they don’t necessarily have the brains for the seminar classes. That’s where they are leaving, now.
Texas has UTA, which used to be the refuge of everyone bright and interesting, and A&M, which, while an ag school- was an ag school in an ag state: they spawn off our leaders- like Rick Perry. A&M hasn’t the tolerance or capacity for strange that UTA has. And since Texas is a very, very conservative, basically poor state, mostly the liberal arts and creative students at other schools just kind of look like stunned refugees, hiding in their single, little coffee-shop or loitering at the revival movie theatre. Austin has an entire chain of alternate movie theatres, and a movie studio, as well as the uni program, as well as the wildly strange community college program.
Austin does things completely different than all the rest of Texas. And the rest of Texas maneuvers to get the advantages of Austin, without the work or restrictions. The Legislature tries to put in bills affecting our water supply, our air quality, our energy supply, our insurance habits. they don’t do that to Dallas, or Houston, or San Antonio. We’re worth more to the future of this state, than all the rest of them put together.
Another case of College Town Superiority Syndrome. Or, as most Texans would call The People’s Republic of Austin: 30 square miles surrounded by reality.
Back in the Student Strike era of the Viet Nam War protests the colleges and universities decided one way to deal with the student rebellion was to reduce the work load for the students from five courses per semester to four courses per semester. That was of course a huge mistake and allowed the dumbing down of the entire process. If we are going to make college more affordable a good first step would be to increase the per semester workload back to where it was in the 1960s and cut the total years required to get a degree.
Another major savings would be the presentation of lectures in bulk DVD format so that the students could get the basics of history, art history, english literature, and other general lecture courses long before they approach the scarce resources of classrooms, lecture halls and teaching faculty. You can learn more about history from a couple days on the better parts of the International History Channel then you can in many courses at college.
DVD lectures,reading of core texts and primary sources with interactive software showing simple answers to basic concepts in embedded “answer” fields within the text would be powerful additions to prelearning strategies. The use of Google based supplimentary reading and other such efforts can go a long way to teaching the material and preparing the student for the much more rigorous level that could be then provided in the seminar formats. All of these productivity enhancing techniques could bring college into the 21st century.
We could solve the problem if all our American students took their degrees in India, bankrupting a corrupt and near meaningless education structure here – one more driven by edu-politics that a thirst to teach or seek truth.
I would call this movement a reverse Cloward-Piven strategy.
I find the comment that graduate level courses take more work for the professors to teach laughable. My experience is with graduate professors in mathematics using 30 year-old books, and lecture notes from the first time they taught the course.
Professors want graduate students because professors have to claim to be teaching somebody. They don’t necessarily want to have all their graduate students graduate. Many places instructors, retired high school teachers with masters, could replace the graduate teaching assistants at a lower cost.
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