Study Shows Professors With Tenure Are Worse Teachers

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "We all know the stereotype about tenured college professors: great researchers, lazy teachers. Now Jordan Weissmann writes in the Atlantic that a new study confirms the conventional knowlege that faculty who aren't on the tenure-track appear to do a better job at teaching freshmen undergraduates in their introductory courses than their tenured/tenure-track peers. 'Our results provide evidence that the rise of full-time designated teachers at U.S. colleges and universities may be less of a cause for alarm than some people think, and indeed, may actually be educationally beneficial.' Using the transcripts of Northwestern freshmen from 2001 through 2008, the research team focused on two factors: inspiration and preparation. The team began by asking if taking a class from a tenure or tenure-track professor in their first term later made students more likely to pursue additional courses in that field. That's the inspiration part. Next the researchers wanted to know if students who took their first course in a field from a tenure or tenure-track professor got better grades when they pursued more advanced coursework. That's the preparation part. Controlling for certain student characteristics, freshmen were actually about 7 percentage points more likely to take a second course in a given field if their first class was taught by an adjunct or non-tenure professor and they also tended to get higher grades in those future courses. The pattern held 'for all subjects, regardless of grading standards or the qualifications of the students the subjects attracted' from English to Engineering. The defining trend among college faculties during the past 20 years or so (40, if you really want to stretch back) has been the rise of the adjuncts. 'That said, there is something appealingly intuitive in these results,' concludes Weissmann. 'Professionals who are paid entirely to teach, in fact, make for better teachers. Makes sense, right?'"

Comments

Moo

[Chacham]

Is the difference really tenured or non-tenured? Or is it, younger or older.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to miss the point. He meant younger or older professors. You see, chances are that the non-tenured professors are younger than the tenured professors. The fact that you require this explanation proves you were taught by a tenured professor.

Could the youthful exuberance of a younger professor make a difference? Can the smaller age variance make them more approachable? Could it be that the tenured professors are too busy banging the best looking chicks in class? Could it be that the students get older and have more access to alcohol?

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

It is fashionable to blast the tenure process, but faculty that get fired are not going to go work at the local gas station (or even at some software company) and come back as great faculty ever again. And people generally get tenured about the time they are dealing with families, and are least-likely to tolerate long-distance moves, which is important considering how distant universities are from each other. So you start instituting the destruction of the tenure process, and you'll destroy universities ... in the US, that is the perhaps the only part of the educational process that is actually good.

Re:Moo

[Larry_Dillon]

I think you're onto something here. Senior faculty sometimes resent having to teach 101 classes. Tenure is important for academic freedom and to go against what the administration wants.

Re:Moo

[taiwanjohn]

Adjuncts are also handy for keeping your payroll costs down. Economist Richard Wolff mentions this often in his lectures. It's the same trend toward part-time work that shows up in a lot of industries lately.

My suspicious side notes that this study in TFA is rather convenient for academic administrators who might want to "enhance the institution's bottom line" by reducing the number of tenured faculty. But I'm sure there's no connection, and it would never be used like that. ;-)

Re:Moo

[thoromyr]

When I had sociology 101 it was taught, due to unusual circumstances, by the department chair. This was at a reasonably large university and, being a required freshman course, had large classrooms. I was not, however, a freshman. By that time I had two years behind me and was picking up the required courses at the university I had transferred to.

If you had surveyed the students they would have indicated the instruction was terrible. Not because it was, but because they were nearly all freshman. Straight from highschool with over rated opinions of their own intellectual capacity, no ethic for study or class participation, and no interest in the class. Although it was hampered by class size it was one of the better taught classes I've been in.

Yes, I realize you are emphasizing "freshman undergraduates" and "introductory courses", but the problem isn't (necessarily) that tenure track professors are less effective at teaching them but (more likely) that they push and expect more (something) from the students.

Students are an amazingly lazy lot*. At a third university (yeah, I moved around a bit) I took a medieval history course. It was flooded with students and it turns out that 1) there was either no class size limit or it was not enforced and 2) the prof had (deservedly or not) gained a reputation as being an "easy A". I had a genuine interest in the topic and, being new, had not heard of the rep until the first day of class. It was a "flash enrollment" situation -- apparently the class had been small up to that semester and he spent an undue amount of time trying to convince people to drop. When taking a survey of students concerning their professors the group bias needs to be taken into account.

I've known tenured professors who taught at various levels (introductory courses on up) who were absolutely *loved* by students because you got an A simply by being enrolled. Top approval ratings, voted for teaching excellence, etc. Conversely, another tenured professor, on the first day of class for a required course, bragged that he (and one other) prof accounted for something like 90% of the students taking it semester after semester and that 60% of those students didn't pass. It was a point of pride with him. Without knowing more about the situation, student evaluation of professors is basically meaningless.

What it boils down to is that some professors are gas bags who just like to hear themselves talk. Some are there for the pay check. Others are just there for the research and resent having any class load at all. In other words, they vary.

About the one valid generalization that can be made of tenured vs non-tenure track vs non-tenured tenure track is that non-tenure track tend to try harder and care more about student approval; non-tenured tenure track tend to try to meet tenure requirements and care more about student approval. In other words, tenured faculty (as a generalization) tend to be less concerned with student approval. They've also been doing it long enough to have learned that students want contradictory things (e.g., there was too much classroom discussion vs there was not enough).

* I'm using this as a generalization of undergraduates in general. Graduate students are, in my experience, more motivated than nearly any undergraduate. But the motivation levels of undergraduate students varies a lot ranging from the "I can't be bothered to show up for class" freshman to the rare "I will exceed the expectations for all assignments". Students suffer from a range of maladies, such as believing they can pass a class without doing any assigned work or reading.

Re:Moo

[Cassini2]

The university system was set up to preserve and expand knowledge. The tenure system works well in that regard. Most tenured professors keep doing research, and keep graduating PhDs. Witness the number of retired (Professor Emeritus) professors that are still active in their fields.

Once you realize that universities were never meant to teach large numbers of undergraduate students, then the problems start becoming obvious. What does research and tenure have to do with undergraduate teaching? If you are lucky, in the fourth year you might start to get current knowledge in most engineering programs. Everything taught before that has been known since the 1950's (and often much earlier like the 1700's). As such, current research has almost nothing to do with the undergraduate program. Even current employment trends, on the whole, have nothing to do with the curriculum of the undergraduate program at most universities. (Witness the large number of liberal-arts majors and the correspondingly small number of associated liberal-arts jobs.)

The explosion that is about to happen is that:
a) students want to pay for something that gets them a job,
b) universities were never originally structured for job training, and
c) the universities have no funding formula to pay for the practical facilities for practical job training. This means that students graduate without practical skills, and this makes them unemployable.

We are heading to a world where we have many highly-educated, unemployed, indebted and poor former university students.

Re:Moo

[Obfuscant]

Can the smaller age variance make them more approachable?

I doubt the variance of the ages of "younger" professors has anything to do with it. Perhaps the smaller difference in age between student and teacher does.

This is one of those "d'oh" kinds of articles. Tenure was never intended to reward teaching, only research. Professors are judged on research, not teaching. Of COURSE teaching faculty will do a better job, in general, at teaching because that's what they are hired to do and what they are judged on. Especially at the freshman level courses that are done over and over again. And teaching faculty aren't distracted by worrying about their research.

That's not to say you cannot find excellent teachers in the ranks of the professors. You can find excellent teachers in any profession. They are excellent teachers not because of their position but despite it.

So, d'oh.

No way!

[Anon, Not Coward D]

I wonder why a person with in a unremovable job would put low effort on classes...

Seriously this is news?

Yes, but...

[c]

I hate to talk about correlation/causation, but there's typically some significant demographic differences between profs with and without tenure.

My experience is that tenure-track profs were a heck of a lot younger, meshed well with the students, hadn't spent the last 20 years teaching the course, and were more likely to put in more time and effort on the material. Tenured profs also tend to have a lot of things sucking their time (obviously researchers, but department heads and/or deans are worse), so they dump a lot more on the TA's and are pretty tight for office hours.

I'd be curious to see how things break down when they account for demographic differences. If that's even feasible.

Re:Yes, but...

[EdgePenguin]

This seems fairly obvious. Younger faculty relate better to young students. But such a caveat doesn't fit well with a sensationalist press release/headline.

Its a pretty shitty aspect of western culture (don't know if other cultures experience it or not) that there is mass resentment of other people having any kind of job security. There is the notion that "other people" are all feckless, lazy slobs who must be whipped to work harder by constantly being threatened with redundancy and poverty.

The worse the economy gets, the stronger this feeling. Whip the Others harder, get the economy going. Leave me and people I know alone - we are hardworking families - kick those Others into working longer hours for lower wages; the fuckers are getting off too lightly. Problem is, this is just a feeling. Actual research into motivation finds that an environment of fear, or even promise of big rewards, does not generate productivity in anything other than menial tasks. Unsurprisingly, most people work better if they aren't constantly stressed.

Re:Hmmm, Perplexing...

[__aaltlg1547]

There's a lot more difference than that. They're comparing people who are paid to teach with people who are paid to research in their effectiveness at teaching. If you perceive your job is X, why would you spend a lot of effort on Y? The point that they only compared introductory courses is also relevant. The untenured professors did better in introductory courses. Advanced courses were not compared, so it may be that tenured professors are overall better at teaching advanced and graduate students. Maybe a university needs both to give the best education across the students' course of study.

Re:Hmmm, Perplexing...

[EdgePenguin]

Except you, and the people publishing this article, have ignored any other contributing factors (like faculty being closer in age to their students for instance.) You jump straight to the conclusion that you like, which is a misanthropic view that everybody apart from yourself (and people you like) are lazy, no-good idiots who need to be booted in the arse constantly in order to do any work. Your problem is that this is simply not true. Human motivation is more complex than that, and people do not in the general case do better jobs if you constantly threaten them - regardless of how that might give you some kind of perverse satisfaction.

Re:Awful professor story

[EdgePenguin]

Quick solution to that. Don't take "sociology of religion". I'm willing to bet your physics, maths and engineering professors don't dick around like that.

Re:Stupid fact fuck can't afford ice cream!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the biggest tea party assholes yelling about food stamps are also getting millions of dollars because they are "farmers" and qualify for subsidies. The tea party are stooges... always check out their background before listening to the bullshit coming from their mouths.

The problem is, if you are a farmer and you don't take the subsidy, you will not succeed in a market full of farmers who do.

The tea-party farmers may dislike the situation all the more for this, for the feeling of having to do something they find repugnant just to make a living because of government interference in their market. That is not hypocrisy. It is only hypocrisy if they really think the subsidies are great and go around advocating them.

The solution to food stamps that we can actually implement is to reform our tax codes and otherwise stop doing the things that make businesses want to move jobs overseas. The other great solution is to put into federal prison the people who crashed our economy, making sure they go into the general population of inmates.

Hard work is the best teacher

[elashish14]

You can't rely on every instructor that you have in school to be the best. And to make things even more complicated, just because a bunch of other students consider an instructor to be good, does not mean that his/her teaching style will be good for you. For example, I learned the most when I had teachers that kept lectures to a minimum but designed very thoughtful and enlightening homework assignments, problem sets, etc. while other students preferred instructors who explained everything plainly while providing minimal assignments (this prevents you from thinking critically on your own).

If you want to get the maximum mileage out of your college experience, learn how to use the resources around you, whether they be textbooks, the internet, other students, and junior instructors. If you walk in expecting all your instructors to do the majority of the work in teaching you, then you're doomed from the start.

Re:Alternative Metrics

[Anonymous Coward]

As a tenured faculty member, I can attest to the fact that tenure/tenure-track faculty at many research schools are evaluated (raise/promotion/tenure) on metrics different from adjuncts and instructors. Devoting sufficient time and effort to teaching can be counter productive for your career. For many disciplines, external funding and publications are the primary criteria for evaluation. Ultimately, energies in teaching are focused on graduate students - who support those activities. Add in service (committees, societies and the like) and it's often an issue of limited time.

This is true for most professions. I worked a helpdesk before I was promoted to a programmer. We used to complain that programmers never answered their pages (yes, I'm that old). Then when I became a programmer, I realized that the word, "support" was never used in my yearly reviews. Kind of explained the whole attitude programmers had.

Re:Gotta be some kind of compensation.

[Overzeetop]

Actually, the cost is enormous.

Do you know why NBA players get so much money? Because there are less than 500 players and there are no less than 20 million fans. Not only that, but by playing a single game, they can provide entertainment to all of them with no more effort than if there were just a single fan. With a ratio of 40,000:1 and the ability to connect with all of them simultaneously it's easy to get good pay.

In any given classroom there are 20-40 students (more for cattle classes, fewer for jr/sr classses). Any more and the personal connection which makes teaching such an interactive endeavor is reduced. 30:1 isn't a great ratio for increasing compensation.

If every NBA fan kicks in an extra $25, you can raise a player's salary by a million dollars a year. If every student kicks in an extra $25, you could raise a teachers salary by $750 - not quite the bump you're looking for to make it a highly desirable pay scale.

Re:Stupid fact fuck can't afford ice cream!

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm down a$$hole. Liberals are the biggest scum to walk the earth, then Republicans. Why anyone picks on the Tea Party is beyond me unless you love to kiss the governments a$$ and pay high taxes. I know its hard when you only have a third grade education like most people on this site not to fall under BO's spell but try hard little guy.

Most people on here hate the rich but claim to be engineers and technical people. Most of them make more than 20K a year and IMO that's f-ing greedy. So when all you little pigs get your way railing against the rich, remember that scale is adjustable so you will get yours in the end.

So keep up your ignorant, judgmental and bigoted ways, most second graders do. FU SD!

Re:Thoughts

[EvanED]

Sometimes, students don't like the teachers who force them to work hard and learn the material. That's why we have tenure.

Um no, it's not.

University faculty have tenure because donors to universities would sometimes force the university to fire faculty who took up controversial topics in the wrong direction.

Re:Alternative Metrics

[call -151]

Good summary, speaking as another tenured faculty member. There are a number of things which are not addressed in the study which complicate any analysis:

1. Younger tenure-track faculty tend to rarely teach introductory courses as large lectures in institutions I have been at. Generally, young, untenured faculty are given teaching reductions during their probationary periods to focus on research and getting grants, which are the primary determinants of whether or not they get tenure.
2. Tenured active researchers who are enthusiastic and productive about their research generally teach less overall and are less likely to teach intro courses. There are some active research faculty who relish the large-lecture environment and the "showmanship" aspects that it entails, but in my experience those are not typical and most researchers prefer to teach upper-division and graduate courses.
3. From the study The freshmen who got the biggest boost tended to be less academically qualified students, judged by SAT scores and such, in the hardest subjects. To me, this indicated that the talents being measured are reflective of more basic level information, and perhaps related to improving student organization and study skills. Some adjuncts are excellent at giving the structure and feedback that weak students need (their livelihood may depend upon such skills) whereas other faculty may not have the patience to help get poorly-prepared students up to speed, and their livelihood depends upon other skills such as research, mentoring graduate students and postdocs, and so on.

The first two points result in a biased sample- tenured faculty teaching intro classes may well be dominated by "dead wood" faculty who have to teach more because they are no longer as productive in research, and are more likely to teach intro courses. I have been in departments where one strategy to get unproductive faculty to retire is to assign them to large intro lectures for non-majors. That is not a recipe for learning success and may be sufficient to bias the results downward as seen in the study. It appears there is just one institution in the study (Northwestern, a private university in the American midwest) and if that is a common practice there, that makes the whole thing pretty moot.

Another point is that it does take a while for junior faculty to find their teaching footing, particularly in the large lecture-theater classes. Often, small changes in administrative or organizational methods have a big impact on how happy the students are or how much time they put into the class. With greater instructional experience, particularly in large lectures, it is not surprising that a seasoned adjunct instructor may do better by these metrics that a hotshot excited untenured researcher, no matter how enthusiastic the latter is.