Here are some highlights from a March 13, 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article entitled On the Bottom Line, Good Teaching Tops Good Research. My university is not a research institution like the author’s. But many of my colleagues would like to see us move more in that direction and, in fact, some movement of that sort seems to be happening. Though the numbers cited below would be different for my university, it would be interesting to do the math.
In part, research is more prized because it is easy to determine the dollar value that professors bring to universities through outside grants. It is more difficult to establish the economic value of good teaching…. But it is not impossible.
Our research-grant…income has increased, but our tuition income has increased much more. In 2008 grant recipients…brought in…$60-million, of which roughly $20-million was gross overhead - money given to the college to support the grant. But the research enterprise is expensive….By the time various administrative offices dip…into this overhead pool…$15-million is left to pay the electric bill.
During the same year, gross income from tuition was…$190-million…nine times as much as gross overhead income. Clearly we are today a tuition-driven institution, and while research supported by outside sources provides valuable intangibles…in terms of net income to the university, it's chump change.
So where does good teaching come in? The proportion of freshmen who return for their sophomore year…is 81 percent…. [T]hat means about 500 students a year don't return.
Because each student who did not return would have provided about $50,000 in tuition and fees over the three remaining years until graduation…that retention rate represents a loss of $25-million a year. That's $5-million more than our gross overhead income.
Some of these nonreturning students are not "recoverable…." But a substantial number are on the fence. They could stay, but maybe they will, and maybe they won't. What causes a student to stay? Twenty years of research on the "retention issue" can be summarized in one word: engagement. If the student somehow forms a bond with the institution, he or she comes back to the fold.
How is such a bond formed? It could be social…. Professors have little…to do with those things. But on the academic side, the biggest single factor seems to be: Does a member of the faculty care whether the student lives or dies? How can a student possibly have that feeling when he or she is part of an introductory sociology class of 300? Not easily - but with an investment of time and effort, it can be done.
I teach 600 freshmen a year in my two big introduction-to-biology classes…and a number of years ago, the failure rate started to skyrocket…. So I decided to see if I could do anything that would have an impact….
I announced to my classes that those who failed the first exam would be required to come in and see me for a diagnostic interview. I have had over 95-percent compliance. How? I simply suggest that the result of their not coming in will be so dreadful that I can't even mention it in class. Power of suggestion does the rest. Because more than 100 students typically fail the first exam, I essentially do nothing but see students for two weeks after that. Although they're a bit scared at first, most of them say "thank you" after the interview is over. The first semester that I tried this, the failure rate dropped by 40 percent. I continue the practice to this day with excellent results.
Of course, all the time I spend with these students I could be working on grant proposals. However, out of my 600 students, 114 are statistically at risk of not returning. If, through this personal attention, I "salvage" only five of those students, I will have recovered $250,000 in lost tuition. And I can do that every year. In my discipline, that is far more than I would ever be able to generate in grant overhead.
My university has 27 departments that have an average of at least two courses with more than 150 students each. If instructors in each of those courses "salvaged" the same number of students in their courses as I am sure I do in mine, almost $15-million in otherwise lost tuition could be recovered - about the same amount generated by grant overhead minus expenses.
Can faculty members be trained to be more effective teachers and so have an impact on retention? Absolutely. Instructional-development programs traditionally do just that. These offices are typically marginalized and token at research universities, without appropriate money, prestige, or appreciation. Faculty members typically have no official incentive to seek advanced training in teaching; in fact, they are often discouraged because of the disproportionate emphasis placed on research "productivity."
If research universities like mine, facing hard economic times, are serious about improving their bottom lines, they need to improve teaching. That goal, with the potential to yield far more income than grant overhead, deserves an appropriate investment in time, money, and recognition.
0 comments:
Post a Comment