MADISON, Wis. – Faced with a massive $300 million budget cut, University of Wisconsin officials might want to revisit a radical idea: Actually making professors teach.

The average professor at a major university now teaches just 1.8 courses per semester. Since the average class hour is actually 50 minutes, that translates into less than five hours of actual teaching a week.  Good work if you can get it.

But more important than the leisure time it affords the tenured faculty, the light teaching loads mean that undergraduates are treated like the orphans of higher education, foisted off on an academic underclass of teaching assistants and part-timers.

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The non-teaching professors are also very expensive.

New studies suggest that the continuing decline in teaching loads have contributed to the ongoing tuition sticker shock and that modestly increasing those loads could generate considerable new revenue.

This is hardly a new issue for the UW. Back in 1988, in my book ProfScam, I wrote:

The University of Wisconsin campus is dominated by Bascom Hill, which in turn is dominated by a massive statue of Abraham Lincoln seated in a state of contemplative repose. Generations of students have heard the legend surrounding it: Abe will stand up whenever a virgin walks past. The story has undergone a slight revision. Lincoln now stands whenever a virgin or a senior professor who teaches more than two undergraduate courses a semester passes by … According to the administration, the average professor at the University of Wisconsin now teaches not nine, but six hours a week. Even that is questionable….”

In the mid-Eighties, auditors for the state found that the six hour average only included the fall semester, where teaching loads tended to be higher. Worse yet, the audit of teaching loads only covered the 1,318 UW professors who were actually teaching at all, which represented fewer than 2/3 of the profs on the payroll at the time. The rest were off doing something else – administration, sabbaticals, research.

By the late 1980s, the flight of the professoriate from teaching had affected nearly every aspect of life on campus: class sizes were often huge and students often could not get the courses they needed to graduate. Typically, the UW administrators of the time took out their wrath not on the faculty, but on students and the taxpayers: Tuition was raised, the number of students cut back, and programs for undergraduates slashed.

Fast forward to 2015.

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A recent survey of faculty nationwide found that “There has been a significant decline in time spent teaching. ” The study by the Higher Education Research Institute found that “students are increasingly taught by part-time faculty in institutions, particularly in introductory courses.”

This flight from teaching has had direct impact on the spiraling costs of higher education – even at schools like UW.

A 2013 study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) found that more than 81 percent of the tuition increases since 1987 at public research universities could have been avoided if teaching loads had not declined.

This echoes another study by Center for College Affordability and Productivity that found that 20 percent of the faculty at the University of Texas actually did 57 percent of the teaching at the school. Researchers concluded that if  “80% of faculty with the lowest teaching loads” were to “teach about half as much as the 20% of faculty with the highest loads” tuition and fees at UT could be cut in half.

But here is where the numbers could get really interesting for UW policymakers. Even adding a single class to the teaching loads of professors could have a dramatic impact on the university’s revenue. More teaching means that the universities would be able to offer more classes, teach, more students, and theoretically take in more tuition dollars.

The 2013 ACTA study found that if professor taught just one more class per semester, UW-Madison would be able to offer 1,948 new classes. Assuming that all of the extra students who could be accommodated would pay the average in-state tuition, the study estimated that this would enable UW-Madison alone to take in $139 million a year in extra tuition revenue.

If the extra students paid the average out-of state tuition, the take was even larger: UW-Madison could increase its tuition revenue by $439 million.

This would also trickle down to the other four-year and two-year campus. For example, if the average teaching load at UW’s 2-year campuses was raised by just half a class a semester, the schools could add 154.5 classes and bring in more than $3.7 million in extra tuition.

Of course these numbers are rough and do not account for any lost research dollars. But the dirty secret of academia is that the many professors do little or no valuable research.  And yet, many of them benefit from the light teaching loads. In effect, say critics, the deadwood faculty members are “essentially stealing from taxpayers and students.”  But even if the most productive professors were exempted from having to spend more time with undergraduates, the benefits to students from higher teaching loads could be considerable.

Obviously, change won’t come easily.

Back in 1987 a Wisconsin legislator had the temerity to propose legislation mandating a 15 hour a week teaching load — and the university predictably exploded in indignant outrage.

Critics waxed eloquent, predicting that requiring professors to teach more would “make research impossible”; UW degrees would be worthless; and the only faculty who would stay at Madison “would be those who are duds.” Needless to say, the doomsday bill never got to the floor of either house of the legislature.

Now, of course, no one would dream of suggesting something as radical as a 15 hour a week teaching load. Even nine hours would be unbearably radical. But what about a two course minimum — a mere six hours?

Even if the legislature stays out of the matter (and lets the newly empowered UW make the call , we can expect the usual howls of protest and identical arguments against returning profs to the classroom.

But this time the radical, appalling, shocking idea might actually find a more receptive audience.

Authored by Charlie Sykes
Originally published here

Published with permission