Where does one begin looking for deadwood to cut in higher education? The faculty, of course.
Preferably, tenured faculty.
Ideally, lazy, tenured faculty who are collecting paychecks while doing little actual teaching.
A new study by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity examined teaching loads of faculty members at the University of Texas in Austin and found an extraordinary variation between professors. Conclude the authors:
If the 80 percent of the faculty with the lowest teaching loads were to teach just half as much as the 20 percent with the highest loads, and if the savings were dedicated to tuition reduction, tuition could be cut by more than half (or, alternatively, state appropriations could be reduced even more—by as much as 75 percent).
Some key findings:
- 20% of UT Austin faculty are teaching 57% of student credit hours. They also generate 18% of the campus’ research funding, suggesting that they are not jeopardizing their status as researchers by assuming such a high level of teaching responsibility.
- The least productive 20% of faculty teach only 2% of all student credit hours and generate a small percentage of external research funding.
- Nearly 100% of all research grant funds go to a small minority of faculty (20%).
- Non-tenured track faculty teach a majority of undergraduate enrollments and 31% of graduate enrollments.
If members of the General Assembly want to dig into the increasing unaffordability of public higher education in Virginia, a good place to start would be to explore the variation in teaching loads. Every institution has professors who more than carry their weight — and professors who, protected by their sinecures, significantly under-perform. Is the problem in Virginia as bad as it appears to be in Texas?
If so, are we going to do something about it, or will we allow a protected class of professionals to coast while students load up on college debt and graduate as veritable indentured servants?
