Page 93 - Crisis in Higher Education

Understanding the Root Causes • 67

portion of the costs for higher education. Students pay only 11% from
their income and savings and student borrowing accounts for another
4
16%, which may be repaid by parents, other family members, or friends.
As a result, universities have a trifurcated customer: students who are the
learners, third-party payers, and organizations that hire graduates. These
customers have different values and perspectives, which lead to different
expectations.

4.2.1 Unclear Messages
When the message from customers is muddled, different parts of the
organization step in and use their values to steer it. Tenured faculty and
administrators, who often hold faculty rank, are the strongest and most
vocal employees in higher education. They tend to believe that the pursuit
of knowledge is a noble ambition and that knowledge/learning is a goal
unto itself. For them, it is a priceless gift that everyone should appreci-
ate and strive to attain. Many of them would go as far as to claim that
learning, not job attainment, is the ultimate goal of higher education. In
addition, they want the academic experience to be rigorous and have high
standards. Based on these beliefs, tenured faculty members work hard to

1. Expand the knowledge base of humankind through basic and applied
research
2. Communicate this newfound knowledge to faculty colleagues and
practitioners through academic journals as well as applied, practitio-
ner-focused publications
3. Incorporate these new ideas in their teaching
4. Write textbooks and create other tools to facilitate learning
5. Develop and implement innovative teaching techniques
6. Offer service to the academic community, often called the academy,
by forming and managing organizations to share research ideas and
teaching techniques, creating and supporting journals to publish
research, and reviewing and evaluating research papers before they
are published.

This is consistent with the three criteria on which tenured faculty mem-
bers are evaluated: research and publication, teaching and learning, and
service. This is the essence of tenured faculty work life. Quite honestly, it
has substantial value for creating new knowledge and ideas, which have