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According to Dick Morris, I've joined a cushy profession. Professors don't teach very much, which makes college expensive. He argues that by requiring faculty to work harder "approximating the work week the rest of us find normal" and holding down some administrative costs, the tuition can be cut in half!
Comments on The Choice sum up the reaction -- mainly, that strong opinions are easy to have if you have no clue what you are talking about. Most have focused on the ridiculous claim that faculty don't work very hard, presumably due to Morris's odd belief that the only time professors spend working is time spent in the classroom. Morris would presumably cringe at the claim that the only time he spends working is the time he is physically typing out an article.
Well, maybe not Morris. There's no evidence in this article, at least, that he spend any time doing research. But most faculty spend a lot of time doing research, preparing for class, grading, sitting on committees, meeting with students, etc. When I find one who works less than 50 hours a week, I'll ask her secret.
There are also some funny numbers. Morris argues faculty typically teach 5 courses per year, spending 18-20 hours in the classroom per week. If they were to teach 8 courses, they'd spend 24 hours in class per week. Increasing the number of courses by 60% seems to only increase hours by 20%-33%. Sounds like profitability through magical thinking.
There is one point that Morris could have made, though: some universities could be made cheaper by having faculty do no research and less preparation for class. This wouldn't necessarily be an ideal situation, but it would be cheaper. The question is whether it's worth the cost.
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Comments
Sounds suspicious to me. I
September 17, 2009 by Anonymous, 9 weeks 2 days ago
Comment id: 44816
Sounds suspicious to me. I read that a group of students at some college (NJIT?) once checked the cause of the rising tuition there. Supposedly they found that the teaching costs had remained flat after being adjusted for inflation, but the administration costs had doubled over the same time period. My guess is that this may be a common occurrence given that the function of the administration is more nebulous than that of the professors and that admin are the ones who come up with the budgets.
I also read a quote from a Nobel prize winner where he said that a person has to be somewhat "underemployed" in order to do any breakthrough research. Which sounds fairly reasonable to me. Albert Einstein published most of his best stuff while working full time, but on the other hand, Charles Darwin had (and probably needed) a huge amount of free time to get his theory of evolution worked out as well as he did. Everyone has a different stress level that works best for them, but I doubt anyone can do good research when they are overworked and stressed out.
building costs?
September 23, 2009 by coglanglab, 8 weeks 3 days ago
Comment id: 44940
Did that study look at the costs of buildings? Schools have been building luxury dorms and overly-expensive science facilities in order to lure students, and that has to cost a great deal as well.