How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream

How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream PDF Author: Richard M. Huber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Parents groan as college tuition rises faster than the rate of inflation. Students wonder where the distinguished professors are hiding as inexperienced graduate students take over the classroom. Business executives, straining to increase employee output, question how faculty productivity is measured. Alumni suspect the trustees of their alma mater are not exacting accountability for administrative performance. The public is concerned that "political correctness" is warping the curriculum. Taxpayers ask whether they are getting their money's worth on state-supported campuses. Richard Huber addresses these issues in a book that is both entertaining to read and striking in its insights. Tuition rises faster than the rate of inflation in part because universities enhance their academic reputations by hiring high-salaried scholars with low teaching loads. Undergraduate teaching is often terrible because professors are trained as researchers and rewarded as scholars, not teachers. Faculty output is measured by crude instruments which encourage goofing off as a masquerade for productive work. Trustees fail to enforce accountability because they are typically not familiar with the academic world and are confused by a university culture so totally different from their own corporate culture. The current brawl over the curriculum is not just an ivory tower dispute over race and ethnicity but a challenge to what kind of place America is to be. Taxpayers are not getting their money's worth because research and doctoral-granting universities, the focus of this book, are locked into outmoded personnel practices that assume all tenured professors will be productive scholars. Huber concludes with realistic reforms to improve the teaching of undergraduates and reduce the cost of higher education. And that would be a win-win prescription for the nation as well as the universities.

How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream

How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream PDF Author: Richard M. Huber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
Parents groan as college tuition rises faster than the rate of inflation. Students wonder where the distinguished professors are hiding as inexperienced graduate students take over the classroom. Business executives, straining to increase employee output, question how faculty productivity is measured. Alumni suspect the trustees of their alma mater are not exacting accountability for administrative performance. The public is concerned that "political correctness" is warping the curriculum. Taxpayers ask whether they are getting their money's worth on state-supported campuses. Richard Huber addresses these issues in a book that is both entertaining to read and striking in its insights. Tuition rises faster than the rate of inflation in part because universities enhance their academic reputations by hiring high-salaried scholars with low teaching loads. Undergraduate teaching is often terrible because professors are trained as researchers and rewarded as scholars, not teachers. Faculty output is measured by crude instruments which encourage goofing off as a masquerade for productive work. Trustees fail to enforce accountability because they are typically not familiar with the academic world and are confused by a university culture so totally different from their own corporate culture. The current brawl over the curriculum is not just an ivory tower dispute over race and ethnicity but a challenge to what kind of place America is to be. Taxpayers are not getting their money's worth because research and doctoral-granting universities, the focus of this book, are locked into outmoded personnel practices that assume all tenured professors will be productive scholars. Huber concludes with realistic reforms to improve the teaching of undergraduates and reduce the cost of higher education. And that would be a win-win prescription for the nation as well as the universities.

A Professor's Work

A Professor's Work PDF Author: Matthew Melko
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761812173
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
A year-long participant-observer study of the work of a university professor at a mid-level urban university. The author explores his role as a sociology professor in research, teaching classes, attending seminars, dealing with administrators, serving on committees, and dealing with students and peers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Understanding Faculty Productivity

Understanding Faculty Productivity PDF Author: Michael F. Middaugh
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0787958611
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
"An invaluable resource for any college and university striving tomeet the National Cost Commission's call to make what colleges doand what it costs more 'transparent' to the public." --Jacqueline E. King, director, federal policy analysis, AmericanCouncil on Education Defining and measuring faculty productivity are among the mostcentral issues for quality and accountability in higher education.Known for assembling some of the most authoritative research onfaculty productivity--and for analyzing its impact on academic andinstitutional accountability--Michael F. Middaugh presents thiscomprehensive volume to help campus professionals build greateraccountability for students, parents, foundations, governmentalorganizations, and other concerned constituents. Middaugh firstdraws from a research study funded by TIAA-CREF's CooperativeResearch Grant Program and the Fund for Postsecondary Educationwithin the U.S. Department of Education. He then provides a newframework for analyzing faculty efficiency and emphasizes how theresults of faculty work can become the best indicators ofproductivity. He also applies the joint study findings to the taskof developing benchmarks for faculty productivity. Practitionersfrom any type of campus will find a rich array of data, valuablerecommendations, and relevant examples.

Theory and Best Practices in Science Communication Training

Theory and Best Practices in Science Communication Training PDF Author: Todd P. Newman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351069349
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This edited volume reports on the growing body of research in science communication training and identifies best practices for communication training programs around the world. Theory and Best Practices in Science Communication Training provides a critical overview of this emerging field. It analyzes the role of communication training in supporting scientists’ communication and engagement goals, including their motivations to engage in training, the design of training programs, methods for evaluation, and frameworks to support the role of communication training in helping scientists reach their goals. Overall, this collection reflects on the growth of the field and provides direction for developing future researcher–practitioner collaborations. With contributions from researchers and practitioners from around the world, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and professionals within this emerging field.

Democracy and the Academy

Democracy and the Academy PDF Author: Robert Weissberg
Publisher: Nova Publishers
ISBN: 9781560727835
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Treatises on democracy in higher education are hardly original undertakings in today's troubled, often acrimonious campus environments. All the "hot button" issues -- racial preferences in admissions, sexual harassment, government funding, multiculturalism, speech codes, even formulating the core curriculum -- sooner or later drag in "democracy". In fact, academic democracy has become a virtual scholarly mini-industry. The authors bring a breath of fresh perspectives to this expansive subject, a collection of analyses written by scholars seldom invited to prestigious conferences dominated by eminent presidents, trustees, provosts, and all the other educational "leaders" who normally define pubic discourse at a safe distance from the classroom. The authors eschew the customary offering of high-sounding speeches, platitudes and rhapsodizing about the democratic role of education, especially well-funded education.

Zealotry and Academic Freedom

Zealotry and Academic Freedom PDF Author: Neil Hamilton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351298828
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
Zealotry and Academic Freedom began with the author's personal experience with suppression of academic speech and obstacles to the pursuit of academic quality. Using his own tumultuous experience as a starting point, Hamilton explores how significant efforts to create an autonomous space for academic speech within the university over the past 125 years have been thwarted.Hamilton charges that a fundamentalist academic left in some humanities and social science faculties views the exercise of standards of academic quality and merit-based performance evaluations as tools of oppression and bigotry. Academic zealots ferret out and oppose hidden structures of so-called oppression in our "Eurocentric" culture. Any faculty member overtly supporting academic quality is thus suspected of bigotry and subject to investigations.The opening portion of the book locates similarities with the religious fundamentalism of the nineteenth century in waves of zealotry in American higher education. The first part covers student activism in the 1960s through the emergence of a radical academic left in the early 1990s. The second part examines the meaning of academic freedom and the protection of expression that should be secured. The third and final portion shows how targets of the coercive tactics of the zealots in any period of zealotry can, and have been effectively rebuked, and ultimately overcome.Neil Hamilton's book will generate controversy, particularly the chapters that inquire into the current wave of academic suppression. Hamilton warns that "history instructs that it can happen here." This candid look into the politics of higher education will be gripping reading for all those concerned with the future of education: professors, administrators, students, and parents. There has been a growing literature on this subject, but none cover the legal-political aspects of political correctness with such precision.

Critical Issues in Higher Education

Critical Issues in Higher Education PDF Author: Michael Kompf
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9462090467
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The ideas and papers in this volume primarily showcase the work of a group of new scholars who will lead the next generation of educational practise and inquiry. While the topics explored are critical issues, the ways in which these new scholars have chosen to address them illustrates the diversity of voice, venue and value that has led them to present their work. Education and what it means has entered a new era in which the primary focus on education for the sake of education is strained. An educational free-for-all, in the sense of a no-holds-barred fight, seems in place as competition for market share, effective branding exercises and movement towards a client-based delivery of educational services (on demand as demanded) has been fuelled and compounded by litigation, accreditation, transfer credits and matters of patents, copyrights, ownership and monopoly. The link between education and financial well-being has been co-opted as the key to personal success. Unfortunately, the degree pursuit, often called the “paper chase” has become competitive for learners seeking scholarships, awards and entry into graduate school. This transition indicates movement from becoming well educated to employability potential paralleling much institutional retooling and sustenance of enhanced reputation and fiscal viability.

Assessment Matters in Higher Education

Assessment Matters in Higher Education PDF Author: Sally Brown
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 0335231004
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Assessment really does matter in higher education. Internationally, academics - and those who support them - are seeking better ways to assess students, recognizing that diverse methods are available which may solve many of the problems associated with the evaluation of learning. Assessment Matters in Higher Education provides both theoretical perspectives and pragmatic advice on how to conduct effective assessment. It draws clearly on both relevant research and on its contributors' practical first hand experience (warts and all!). It asks, for example: how can assessment methods best become an integral part of learning? what strategies can be used to make assessment fairer, more consistent and more efficient? how effective are innovative approaches to assessment, and in what contexts do they prosper? to what extent can students become involved in their own assessment? how can we best assess learning in professional practice contexts? This is an important resource for all academics and academic managers involved in assessing their students.

Dental Education at the Crossroads

Dental Education at the Crossroads PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309176395
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Six dental schools have closed in the last decade and others are in jeopardy. Facing this uncertainty about the status of dental education and the continued tension between educators and practitioners, leaders in the profession have recognized the need for purpose and direction. This comprehensive volumeâ€"the first to cover the education, research, and patient care missions of dental schoolsâ€"offers specific recommendations on oral health assessment, access to dental care, dental school curricula, financing for education, research priorities, examinations and licensing, workforce planning, and other key areas. Well organized and accessible, the book: Recaps the evolution of dental practice and education. Reviews key indicators of oral health status, outlines oral health goals, and discusses implications for education. Addresses major curriculum concerns. Examines health services that dental schools provide to patients and communities. Looks at faculty and student involvement in research. Explores the relationship of dental education to the university, the dental profession, and society at large. Accreditation, the dental workforce, and other critical policy issues are highlighted as well. Of greatest interest to deans, faculty, administrators, and students at dental schools, as well as to academic health centers and universities, this book also will be informative for health policymakers, dental professionals, and dental researchers.

The Prospect of Internet Democracy

The Prospect of Internet Democracy PDF Author: Michael Margolis
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754675143
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
The internet opens up new opportunities for citizens, interest groups and political institutions, but will it revolutionize politics? The Prospect of Internet Democracy offers a rich and detailed exploration of the theoretical implications of the internet and related information and communication technologies (ICTs) for democratic theory.