Teaching load for professors

Published April 17, 2015

Editorial by Wilmington Star-News, April 15, 2015.

A lot of new ideas are floating around Raleigh these days. Unfortunately, some of them are just plain lousy. Case in point: A bill in the General Assembly that would require all professors at University of North Carolina campuses to teach four courses per semester.

Sponsored by Republican state Sen. Tom McInnis of Rockingham and strongly endorsed by Art Pope’s Center for Higher Education Policy, the bill responds to a frequent complaint from parents and alumni.

Students pay big tuition bills for the privilege of attending a university – especially a big “research” campus like UNC-Chapel Hill or N.C. State. For the first couple of years of their stay, at least, they’ll find many of those courses taught by harried graduate students or fill-in adjuncts. McInnis wants all courses taught by “real” professors.

There’s also a little easy populism going on here. After all, most high school instructors teach five courses a day. Can’t we get more work out of those overpaid, pointy-headed (and mostly liberal) college layabouts?

Well, not exactly. College is not the same as high school. The courses are tougher, and professors are expected to do more one-on-one work with students – especially graduate students – than high school teachers do.

Moreover, professors – especially in the sciences – are expected to devote a big chunk of their time doing original research to keep on the cutting edge of their fields. There’s a phrase for this in academia: “Publish or perish.”

Anyone who knows anything about how a real college works will tell you that four courses a semester, or eight a year, is a punishing load. Few, if any, accredited universities of the type that make the U.S. News & World Report “best” list require anything close. Three classes a semester is considered heavy.

If McInnis’ bill passes in anything like its current form, the results will be all too predictable. Any professor worth his or her salt, who can get a job anywhere else, will leave the state university system. The UNC campuses will be left with the scraps.

The outstanding public universities that Republicans from John Motley Morehead to Fred Eshelman labored to build would lie in ruins. Tar Heel students of limited means would lose access to world-class instruction at prices they could afford.

The real answer is not to force professors to work overtime, but to find the money to hire new ones. That notion, however, is not likely to find much favor in the legislature as it stands.

A mass exodus of academics might be exactly what some of this bill’s backers have in mind.

On the other hand, students and employers who rely on the UNC system to train professional personnel would be grossly shortchanged.

We give this short-sighted bill a failing grade.

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20150415/ARTICLES/150419829/1108/opinion?template=printart

April 17, 2015 at 8:12 am
Frank Burns says:

This would be a good initiative to help students actually graduate in 4 years and force Universities to become more cost effective. For those professors engaged in research, the research funds would offset their salaries if it takes them away from the classroom.

April 17, 2015 at 11:23 am
Tom Hauck says:

Thank you for your column.

It gave me the opportunity to ask -- since kids going to the university do not have the opportunity to interact with the real professors, but only with the "harried graduate students or fill-in adjuncts", why not save a ton of money and go to Community Colleges and learn from real teaching professors during the first two years.