In my research of academic standards, I came across The Society for A Return to Academic Standards -- a fascinating collection of links and articles that seek to "peg the prof" and hold him/her accountable for the lowering standards of student performance among American undergrates.

I hope to return to this site often, because I have mixed emotions about all of this. On the one hand, I think it's a gross oversimplification to say that a professor is to blame for a student's academic failures. They might contribute to it, but they're probably not the direct cause. On the other hand, I recall my own days as a student, and there were times when I knew the teacher was just punching the clock or reading old notes or otherwise not wholly engaging in the act of teaching. It's one of the risks of liberal education, where the pursuit of knowledge is (or should be) free from the constraints of the workplace. Teaching is a job, and yet learning is not. And that's probably the crux of the problem.

One fallacy I see a lot of, however, is the assumption that if a teacher isn't standing at the front of the classroom, then they're not working. If you're not a teacher, you'd be surprised at how much writing, planning, reading, speaking, and administering we have to do. You'd have no clue about how accountable we really are, in terms of not only teaching our students well but also serving the campus and the community at large, in addition to engaging in scholarship and broadening the range of knowledge. And outsiders just don't realize how important course releases and sabbaticals are for faculty development and workload/life balance. People who don't understand the reality of academic work often cry for "accountability" without realizing what they're asking for.

In one outrageous essay I found at SFRTAS, called "Tenured Weasels" (from 2000), Patrick Moore claims that undergraduate educators "launder time" and thus do undergrads a disservice. "Professors don't steal money," he writes. "They steal time." In exemplum, he cites graduate programs at small institutions, which -- in his view -- teachers use to get time off to prepare new courses which aren't all that different than undergrad courses and often don't require much preparation. Or they often are cross-listed, as courses for BOTH undergrads and grads. Other "time laundering" operations include assigning class presentations where the students do all the lecturing, and so forth.

Moore contests the way profs seem to get time for their own pursuits, sacrificing the needs of their students for their own gains. But what Moore fails to understand is the notion of "faculty development" -- we must be students as well as teachers in this profession -- and every course benefits from time put into preparation in advance. Clearly, Moore's assumptions about graduate preparations are groundless: graduate-level courses require the professor to not only be as up-to-date on trends and new knowledge as their extra-brainy students, but also require reading longer researcher papers, leading more challenging discussions and seminars, proctoring dissertations (book length papers!), intensive mentoring and advising, and more.

Although I vehemently disagree with much of the logic of Moore's essay, it's still worth a read to understand the suspicion and skepticism folks have about the work that profs do and the case they might make against tenure. Also worth a read is a follow-up article at the Christian Science Monitor: "Pressuring professors to put in more face time" from 2001. [This article cites the book, Profscam, which I'm going to hunt down when I get the chance.]

Time isn't stolen; it's valued by professors because they don't have it and they clamor for "time releases" to do the work that they love to do. Time isn't "released" like a release from prison...it's simply shifted to something other than the standard contracted work. The fact is, most professors I know aren't "time laundering"...they barely have time to do their own laundry!

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