Page 135 - Crisis in Higher Education

106 • Crisis in Higher Education

of employers, and pedagogy is adjusted so students can be successful.
Table 5.1 indicates that doing so improves the effectiveness and pro-
ductivity of universities and enhances the quality of learning materi-
als while keeping their costs low.

In addition to tenured and professional faculty’s critical role in curricu-
lum design, they are key players in determining research output, institu-
tional quality, marketing strengths, and revenue generation. These roles
are summarized in the following list.

1. Research output: Tenured faculty sets and executes research agendas.
They write most of the externally funded research proposals submit-
ted to industry, foundations, and governments.
2. Institutional quality: The quality of universities is determined in
large measure by the quality of its research and instruction. Tenured
faculty members are leaders in research, whereas tenured and pro-
fessional faculty members have critical roles in designing and imple-
menting curricula.
3. Marketing: Students are often attracted to one university over
another because of the reputation of its degree programs, the status
of its faculty, or an opportunity to work on research projects with
eminent scholars.
4. Revenue: Research conducted by tenured faculty and teaching con-
ducted by all types of faculty generate most of the academic-related
revenue. (Note: This does not include revenue from ancillary ser-
vices, which should be self-sustaining, such as sports programs,
dormitories, and food service. These entities should not use tuition
dollars for support.)

It seems clear from this summary that tenured faculty should have an
important, maybe even dominant, role in decisions regarding strategic
planning, resource allocation, and university governance. This explains
why the bond between tenured faculty and administrators must be both
close and strong.
Because universities are PSOs that depend on tenured faculty experts,
it is not appropriate to think of them as interchangeable and easily
replaceable production employees who assemble goods, fill orders for
customers, perform basic services such as lawn care or loan applications
at branch banks, or even serve as staff economist at the U.S. Department