I’ve always enjoyed novels set in academe. Even though many of them contain somewhat unflattering parodies of academic life, they can be very entertaining.
Lately, when I read news articles about U.S. universities, what I read reminds me of the fictional settings, characters, and plot lines of some of those novels. I don’t, however, enjoy reading the nonfictional accounts, because their descriptions of academe are disturbing, not entertaining, and truly remote from my experience.
Is my life as a professor so different from the norm? Is my university unusual? I could be wrong, but from what I’ve seen, my experience is fairly typical of that of a science professor at a major research university. So why is there such a disconnect between apparently factual depictions of academe in newspapers and magazines, and my experiences as a professor? There are several possible explanations.
Some news accounts of academic issues are intended to be inflammatory. Especially in these difficult economic times, who wants to read about why professors need the lifetime job security that comes with tenure? Perhaps it is much more satisfying to read articles claiming that professors might, in fact, be harmed by tenure. A prime example is an August 11 article in Slate that was called “Finishing School: The case for getting rid of tenure.”
When I read such articles, I can’t relate to the claims that are made about how much most professors are paid (and from what sources), the role of academic freedom in our professional lives, the responsibility of professors for the publish-or-perish ethos, and the opinion that tenure “incentivizes” faculty members to maintain the status quo.
Like the vast majority of my colleagues, I am not freezing up “tens of millions of otherwise-liquid endowment money for a generation,” as the Slate article suggests. I do the work I am supposed to do (teaching, research, advising, and service) in exchange for my salary. I bring money to the university in the form of grants that pay the salaries of students and other researchers. I did not slow down once I got tenure.
Teaching and research are not mutually exclusive. Undergraduates are not harmed if their professors also do research, even if research is of equal or greater priority compared with teaching. Certainly you could find spectacular examples of star researchers who are horrific teachers, and I feel great sympathy for students subjected to them. But the vast majority of professors I know who do research are also dedicated teachers.
The question of whether being a researcher makes someone a better teacher has been much debated. I am sure that the answer varies from person to person, but I know that being a researcher makes me a better teacher because doing research gives me new ideas and insights for teaching, even for courses I have taught many times before. I know many talented teachers who are intellectually engaged without being active researchers, but what works for me is to rejuvenate my courses via my research. Furthermore, being an effective researcher requires some of the same skills that we need to be effective teachers: To get grants and publish our results, we need to be able to communicate what we did in a clear and compelling way, and explain to nonspecialists why our work is important. So, too, do we need to do that with the concepts, facts, and ideas we want to teach our students.
In addition, I typically advise undergraduates who are active members of my research group. I request money in my grant proposals to pay the students’ stipends and research expenses, and I help them write their own proposals. My colleagues all do the same. Some of those students decide that they want to continue on to graduate school and pursue more research; others decide that that is the last thing they want to do. Either way, we all learn something.
Research is valuable to a university in some ways that can be quantified, and in many ways that can’t, such as the creation of a stimulating intellectual environment (presumably a good thing at a university) and the involvement of students (undergraduate and graduate) in research. We are training the next generation of researchers who are going to invent things, cure diseases, and/or provide new insights about the world (past, present, future). Despite the claims made by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus in their book, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids, and What We Can Do About It, research activities are not responsible for the inadequate emphasis on undergraduate education at some universities.
The effect of tenure on professorial productivity is misunderstood and misrepresented. Deadwood professors do exist, and I think many professors would agree that some sort of constructive post-tenure review, with real consequences, would help with those few problem cases. Nevertheless, most of us do not kick back and spend our days on the golf course or polishing the fixtures on our yachts. Most of us continue to care about teaching and research after we get tenure.
It can take years to build a research group, attract a good cohort of graduate students and postdocs, and keep everything up and running well. By the time some of us get tenure, our research group is rolling and things are getting interesting. Tenure gives us the freedom to spend more time delving into problems, to try riskier ideas that may or may not pay off as quickly with an interesting discovery, and to organize larger-scale collaborative projects than we could pre-tenure—just as tenure is supposed to do.
After tenure, our service commitments ramp up, and we serve on committees at our own university and beyond. Some of us edit journals and hold other positions in professional organizations. And we spend a lot of time advising students and other researchers, helping them reach their career goals. Most of us are busier after tenure than we were before. Universities get what they pay for: hard-working faculty members.
When I look at my colleagues in my own department, elsewhere at my university, and at other universities, I see a large group of dedicated, highly active people. The problem cases are vastly outnumbered by faculty members who care about both teaching and research.
Some of the disconnect between what I read and what I live as a science professor may be related to the fact that the debate is dominated by writers immersed in the humanities. But I don’t see this as a humanities-versus-science-and-engineering issue. Although most of my colleagues are scientists, I see the same care for research and teaching when I serve on interdisciplinary committees and interact with faculty members from the humanities. It therefore puzzles me that the image of the overpaid, tenured, deadbeat professor is so pervasive, and that some of the severest criticism comes from within academe.
Of course universities need reform. Of course we should improve how we integrate research and teaching and how we guide students and other researchers. But we don’t need to start by pointing fingers at hard-working professors who earn average-to-high five-figure salaries. I would also suggest that the actual time we spend on teaching-related activities (not just the scheduled hours of class time) should be considered in discussions of how much professors work. And, finally, reports on any crises in higher education should include serious consideration of the benefits that research brings to universities, including to undergraduate education.