May 14, 2007--Publishing And Perishing

When I read about the Harvard Taskforce On Undergraduate Teaching, I felt as if I had fallen into a time warp. Could it be 1974 again when Harvard’s Dean Harry Rosovsky’s legendary Letter to the Faculty called for reforms in the undergraduate curriculum in order to make it more intellectually coherent, and which also saw a pressing need to improve the quality of undergraduate teaching? It found that very, very few of the Great Men (and at the time there were few of the other persuasion) were to be found anywhere near college students--they were either not teaching much at all (having been granted "release time" to engage in cutting-edge research or, like Henry Kissinger, to serve U.S. presidents) or they were devoting themselves to a cherished few high-flying doctoral students.

But here we go again--this time it's 2007--and the latest taskforce is pretty much calling for the same things. To quote the current dean’s comment about the state of teaching at Harvard, “We need to put our money where our mouth is. We can’t just mention excellent teachers occasionally. We have to notice and reward their efforts consistently.” (See linked NY Times article.)

If Harvard or other universities with great reputations were to do this, they would have to radically transform themselves because no university has ever gained its reputation because of the quality of undergraduate teaching—rather they gain status by the research production of their faculties. It’s this that leads to tenure, promotions in rank, and ultimately the way universities are viewed among their academic colleagues. In fact, at virtually all upwardly-aspiring research institutions, faculty members perceived to be in any way interested in undergraduates (including in unprintable ways) are felt to be suspect—why are they wasting time with “them” when they should be chasing grants to fund their scholarship and sabbaticals, getting articles published in “refereed” journals, or slinking around hoping to be appointed Secretary of State?

Columbia University’s provost acknowledges that they are paying close attention to the Harvard report. To quote him, “If we’re going to ask undergraduates to pay $47,000 a year to come to these elite universities, then we have an obligations to make sure they get a great education.”

What he stopped short of saying is that at most of these places (and I am here excluding Liberal Arts colleges which are a whole other subject) the undergraduates are one the institutions’ cash cows. Though if you surveyed the faculty a majority would prefer not to even have undergrads on campus so all resources (and their time) could be devoted to graduate students), they also realize that undergraduate tuition income helps offset the deficits run up by their more expensive work with graduate students.

And since in cost-benefit terms the most desirable undergraduates are the so-called “full-pay” students (the one’s ineligible for any forms of financial aid and whose parents are thus capable of writing checks each year for the full 47 grand), universities competing with each other for these students are slowly realizing that, when it comes to teaching, they had better come up with an improved product. Because currently what the students get for their parents’ money at Harvard, in addition to the status buzz, is an occasional glimpse of a Noble Prize winner racing across the Yard while most of their classes are taught by ill-paid, uninspiring graduate students.