When discussing productivity and performance at colleges and universities, the conversation often quickly moves to faculty output. This focus seems senseless.
The professors I know, tenured or not, seem to be extraordinarily engaged in their work, and seem to work plenty of hours, either at home or in the office. But many colleges use an outdated model of productivity that measures output against time on task and considers input as the best predictor of output. This was a useful model when engineers were looking for efficiencies and organizations were designed to look like the machines of their day.
The academy must find a different way to measure productivity. Bankers in my firm measure success (for better or worse) by the fees they generate; fees are generated only when the clients’ goals are accomplished, so the bankers can see the fruits of their work in specific, rewarded outcomes. In other disciplines, like law and medicine, professionals earn more billable hours and higher rates with better performance. Markets determine the value of their outcomes.
Outcomes are not related to rewards at universities. Colleges have yet to apply standards to the three main tasks of professors—teaching, research, and service—with anything but very gross subjective measures during promotion and tenure.
Without a better way to measure outcomes, I am afraid that professors will fight an uphill battle of explaining how hard they work. (The middle-class families paying college bills won’t be sympathetic.)
Why not pay a superstar faculty member, renowned for teaching, on a per-student basis? Why not pay the faculty member who draws the finest graduate students accordingly? Why not give an equity interest to faculty members who boost college rankings so they can share in the success they bring an institution? Why not pay a faculty member better if her class learns the course objectives in nine weeks as opposed to traditional 15 weeks? While all this goes against centuries of tradition, it is how we now judge professionals in a postindustrial age.
In many ways, for-profit colleges have a much simpler scorecard. Shareholders are legitimately concerned that decision makers tie investment to payoff, and in this case the shareholders are the most important constituents. The notion that students represent “customers” is important insofar as they have impact on the scorecard.
These scorecards are not so simple for traditional colleges and universities. For-profit colleges have been designed in large measure with the customer in mind. Throughout history, traditional universities have been built around their most important asset: the faculty. Colleges continue to operate on the quaint agrarian cycle, with summers off, and the most prestigious institutions are essentially shut down on Fridays. (What business would give up 20 percent of its earning time?)
The challenge: How does one develop a scorecard for product ivity in the academy? Each institution will have to find ways to judge the effectiveness and value in the holy trinity of teaching, research, and service.
A 21st-century approach to productivity is founded on incentive pay for performance. Until the academy designs measures of performance, the folks footing the bill will find it hard to know what they are paying for.
