What Are Professors Really Worth?
Posted on October 25th, 2010 in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
The Wall Street Journal reports on attempts at some public universities to quantify the value of individual professors. Is a biologist who brings in a $500, 000 grant worth more to a university than a scholar of poetry who teaches a five-student seminar?
This new emphasis has raised hackles in academia. Some professors express deep concern that the focus on serving student “customers” and delivering value to taxpayers will turn public colleges into factories. They worry that it will upend the essential nature of a university, where the Milton scholar who teaches a senior seminar to five English majors is valued as much as the engineering professor who lands a million-dollar research grant.
And they fear too much tinkering will destroy an educational system that, despite its acknowledged flaws, remains the envy of much of the world….
I expect we know where Larry Summers would have come down on this: His wife would have been out of a job.
2 Responses
10/26/2010 4:47 pm
Is it a little odd that NO ONE has anything to say about this article? Are our heads that deep in the sand, people? The tax man cometh… Or am I being overly dramatic?
10/26/2010 6:51 pm
This is one of those arguments the first premise of which you have to refuse, namely that the production and dissemination of knowledge can and should be financially quantifiable. There is a movement of assessment of learning in higher education that is gaining momentum that seeks to show that students leave colleges and universities with enriched knowledge and skills. But the salary and profit based assessment discussed here is just appalling.
I would like to point out that the tables here confirm Watson’s argument in UCLA today: “Bottom Line Shows Humanities Really Do Make Money”