EVERYONE has heard the adage "publish or perish" whether or not they are a member of an academic community. Now some publications are threatening to perish the purpose of a university - education. The future of Virginia's universities teeters on the brink of questionable calculations of academic worth and resulting misplaced priorities.
A successful state-run university serves a myriad of interests. The state wants to provide a quality education to its citizens so they can become productive members of society. If the school achieves nationwide recognition, the state gets bragging rights as well. Students are easy to please - they want a good, not horribly expensive education, and they'd like to be employable when they graduate. Professors want to earn a decent salary, further their career through publishing, and, for the sake of argument, we'll say they also want to teach. The University administration's job is to make sure the whole process rakes in big bucks and big recognition. In other words, they want high rankings.
These forces don't have to work at cross-purposes. However, here at the University and at other Virginia institutions of higher learning, a downward spiral of insufficient resources threatens the very purpose of education.
Students are learning, but not well enough. Classes are too big for the type of individual attention necessary to develop good writing and communication skills. Instead of sitting down with a professor to talk over ideas, students submit one-draft-only papers to overworked grad students. Most of those are returned with negligible comment, because a paragraph for each of a TA's 60 students is the equivalent of a 20 page paper. Add that to a class load and dissertation and 900 pages of first-draft reading, and it's no wonder the grad students aren't begging for more.
Even in circumstances designed to foster discussion, sheer numbers get in the way. Take a quick overview of the Government and Foreign Affairs Department. As the most popular major on Grounds with over 750 declared majors and a curriculum intended to develop critical thinking, one would think one-on-one attention would be given high priority. Not so - the department only has 38 full-time faculty, many of whom may be on leave during any given semester. That leaves a student to faculty ratio of about 23:1 -- among the highest of any department at the University.
These numbers translate into impossibly long waiting lists, fourth years scrambling to finish a major and seminar classes with 30 people instead of a more appropriate 15. Students emerge from this education well-read and well-lectured, but without critical skills like making a logically correct argument on their feet or writing a tightly scripted 15-page paper draft by draft.
These shortcomings are not going unnoticed. The Washington Post ran an article on Nov. 27 commending small liberal-arts colleges for the job they do teaching ("Va. College Scores Well in New Rankings"). The Virginia Business Higher Education Council stated in their Summer 2000 newsletter that "Virginia's colleges and universities face campus decay, overcrowded classes and inadequate technology at a time when resources are needed." The members of this council have been warning for years that Virginia universities are facing a downturn. Virginia will suffer for it later, defeating the goals of the state as it defeats the goals of the students.
Professors are still teaching, but as the above-mentioned class sizes indicate, they are grossly overworked. Jim Sofka, Associate Undergraduate Program Director for Government and Foreign Affairs, points out that the number of students at the University is steadily rising while the number of faculty is static. And in Government and Foreign Affairs, the number of grad students actually is dropping in an attempt to bump up the benefits the grad program can offer to prospective students. Resources are too meager to offer competitive packages without cutting the roster.
All of the above means more work for already stressed faculty who also are expected to publish well and often, so the University can maintain high rankings that are misguided in the first place. Instead of measuring success of alumni, they measure the number of articles published by faculty. Instead of the results of hours spent teaching, they measure the money received from hours spent writing grant applications.
These off-base pronouncements would not be so harmful except that the administration seems to listen. Faculty sources say that high rankings mean bigger payoffs in fund allocation, whether or not the department places an emphasis on the supposed goal of a state university -- teaching -- and whether or not the department is popular with students.
A downward spiral ensues: Professors are rewarded for less time spent with students, more time spent researching. The quality of education falls for students, and that hurts their future employers. Our Commonwealth's leaders in Richmond - coincidentally including several former Wahoos - read the rankings too. When they see that some of our "best" departments are raking in lots of independent money from grants, they conclude that more state funding is unnecessary. Eventually these resources will be spread so thin, and these priorities will be so misplaced, that one of the ranking services will poke a little harder and poke right through the decaying plaster of Cabell Hall.
(Emily Harding's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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