Page 295 - Crisis in Higher Education

Reshaping Faculty’s Role • 265

2. Instructional design (pedagogy): Similar to curriculum design, ten-
ured and professional faculty have key roles in determining how
knowledge is delivered. Instructional faculty and graduate teach-
ing assistants should have an important role in setting pedagogy for
general education and disciplinary core courses because they have
taught these courses and can provide useful insights about what has
and has not worked.
3. Delivery: Tenured faculty should be capable of teaching at all levels,
but they should teach primarily in the major and minor fields of study
as well as masters- and PhD-level courses. Besides, instructional fac-
ulty and graduate teaching assistants can teach general education and
disciplinary core courses very effectively. Professional faculty could
teach all course types with the exception of the PhD. Because their
level of knowledge, experience, and compensation tends to be higher
than instructional faculty, it makes sense to exclude them from deliv-
ering general education courses.
4. Assessment: Tenured and professional faculty should design and exe-
cute mechanisms to measure student performance and determine
grades. This goes back to the idea that instructional faculty, either
full- or part-time, should not define curriculum content, design
tests, or determine results because students can pressure them to
lower standards and inflate grades. This same notion applies to grad-
uate teaching assistants. Thus, these two faculty types should have a
consultative role in assessment for general education and disciplin-
ary core courses. Professional faculty members are fully involved in
assessment because they were senior leaders in their profession and
have firsthand knowledge as to why standards must be maintained.

These ideas are guidelines, not rigid rules. Are their instructional faculty
members who can and do stand their ground when it comes to maintain-
ing standards and setting grades? Are their tenured faculty members who
do not? The answer to both questions is most likely yes, but the proposed
ideas attempt to create a system that has a reasonable chance of coming
to the “right” outcome. When instructional faculty do not determine cur-
riculum content, construct tests, or make decisions about grades, their
teaching lives are easier. When content and performance standards are set
with substantial inputs from potential employers, graduate schools, and
agencies that conduct licensure and certification exams, rigor is not only
defensible but can be described as being in the best interest of students.