Do we need faculty?
Faculty are the most expensive line item in a higher
educational institution. Eliminate
faculty and their salaries, offices, technical equipment, travel funds, and other
frivolous items and you can chop the budget significantly. Students only need
to read textbooks and answer questions at the end of the chapter and whiz
through to a degree.
What a bargain! The
cost of a four year degree can go down to the Internet price only (not
refundable) to $10,000 easily. Happy
day!
How did legislators, popular opinion, and taxpayers get to
this idea? How did faculty become the
financial arm of education that can easily be lopped off with one swift slice? We gotta’ get someone or something to blame
for this.
Can we blame the faculty that magically appear at the start
of class, bellow out a riveting lecture from their yellowed, frayed college
notes and, just as magically disappear at the end of class fostering the notion
that professors are a minor part of learning?
Or maybe we can blame the emphasis on research over teaching
where few students can participate in authentic research let alone even see the
rock star professor.
Then the blame could be put on the endless array of required
core courses taught by naive but enthusiastic, under-supported adjuncts while
students fine tune their texting and Facebook skills.
I guess if you think about it, there is always the high cost
of administrators, fund raisers, clerical staff, technological staff, and the
grounds crew that do expensive things that faculty or students understand.
Professional conferences, student services, football, buildings,
air conditioning, and the price of gas…………Whew, there is lots of things to
blame and that is about as far as I want to go right now.
Let’s just say, there are lots of significant contributing
factors that caused popular opinion to challenge the high cost of higher education. We do need to take this seriously and make some changes.
Traditionally change doesn’t happen from the top. The top dwellers made the established entity. Why would they want to change something in
which they are comfortable? They don’t
want to change. Commonly change comes from
grass roots organizers and financial catastrophe. We have both nipping at our heels.
Well now, I have a pretty simple solution. Lets get a lot more involved with Student Learning Objectives (SLO). Yep, those nasty little things we put on
syllabi to appease our accrediting agencies.
Too often tests let us know if students have read the
textbook, answered the questions at the back of the book and did their
homework. Sound familiar? If students
can succeed this way with or without faculty then how can we defend ourselves
if someone decides to pull the plug on us?
The aforementioned skills will not get them an executive job, but a really
nice clerical job following directions, memorizing and good typing skills; at
least one that hasn’t been taken over by a computer yet.
Students can’t get a job memorizing the name of the 4th
president of the United States. They can
get a job if they have the analytical and communication skills to debate the
cultural and financial state of the country that caused Madison to gravitate
from a strong national government to putting the power in the states. These are the analytical and communication skills
that a student would need to solve contemporary problems in their career. SLO’s demonstrate that students have the
skills that will make them employable.
Can they comprehend readings, write professionally, work in a team,
create, initiate and communicate unique ideas and are self motivated?
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