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Christopher Neck has filed a grievance with Arizona State U. about his increased teaching load...Mr. Neck, an associate professor of management, went from teaching just once a week to teaching five days a week. "They hired me to be a place kicker," he says, "and now they want me to be a linebacker."
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<p>Colleges</a> Are Calling Professors Back to Class - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education</p>
<p>I am not a contract lawyer, but if had it verbally that he was only to teach one class a week and he has been doing it for years, then that’s what he was hired to do. I would want to get paid more if I was asked to work longer hours and more days. On the other hand, we all have been asked to do more for less. We have a choice, either go with it or get another job. If Mr. Neck could get another job with more pay and less work then he should leave.</p>
<p>I think that this little blurb is a little misleading. At large public universities like Arizona State, professors are hired primarily to do research; teaching is secondary. If he got hired to teach only once per week, likely he was only teaching one class, which is pretty standard for superstar researchers at big unis. I go to a prestigious R1 university as a graduate student and most of my professors only teach one class a semester; many of them only teach one class a year, especially at the research-heavy medical center campus.</p>
<p>Teaching takes a LOT of time. Even if you don’t have to prep a class (meaning you’ve taught it before), you still have to revamp and edit your lectures, show up to the class, hold office hours, and grade whatever work you give. You also have to deal with administrative aspects - answering student emails, fielding emails from students’ deans and advisers and sometimes their parents. I’m currently a graduate TA - not even teaching my own class - and the duties are such that I barely have time for my own research and work. Because I love research and came here to do that, it’s somewhat made me change my plans from teaching at an LAC to wanting to teach at a large public flagship instead. The grading alone takes me many hours, and they have homework every week because it’s a statistics class.</p>
<p>The problem is that universities rarely reward you for teaching. Tenure and promotion are built almost entirely on research at these schools, and at some schools (like the medical center campus here) make you pay a chunk of your own salary out of research grants. So most professors, unless they are at teaching institutions and they really love to teach, try to teach as little as possible so that they have more time to do the research that is actually going to get them tenured, promoted, and possibly paid.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the reason administrators are doing this is to line their own pockets. The number of extraneous administrators has proliferated at universities - there are many articles written about that, some of them even in the Chronicle - but at the same time they are cutting tenure lines and making professors take on heavier workloads. Often if a professor retires or leaves, the administrators will tell the department to make do with the reduced faculty - so the same amount of classes will need to be taught by fewer people. When the recession hit and the economy went south, a lot of departments were on hiring freezes because of money. But now even though the money is back at some places, the administrators are like “See? You made do with 10 people instead of the 15 you need; keep doing that” because they want to use the salary and overhead/research money on something else. Meanwhile, many of these administrators are making close to six figures for doing…no one is exactly sure what.</p>
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<p>Handling 500 students a semester in one course is plenty for a guy who has research responsibilities. Of course he has a point.</p>
<p>As I read it, he’s being asked to teach two smaller sections of the same course, instead of the big class, and also being asked to add a second class. If he’s really a professor of management, he might have heard of the concept of getting contracts in writing.</p>
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<p>Well, first off, the person in question is only an associate professor. </p>
<p>Furthermore, his CV is, frankly, not highly impressive, at least from an academic business-school research standpoint. While he does have many refereed research articles, only one of them was published in a consensus A-level journal (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes), and that was published 13 years ago, with all of the articles published in mostly C and D level journals. While he has books, none of them are research-oriented books, but rather seem to be textbooks or even self-help guides. The individual book chapters he has written count for little more than a C-level publication. Hence, he would not be considered a ‘research superstar’ by any top-tier business schools. Nor is ASU considered to be a ‘big’ university, at least from a business school standpoint (unless your definition of ‘big’ is determined by sheer student population whereas mine is based on status. Trust me, the top Phd business graduates from Stanford, Harvard, MIT Sloan, Wharton, Chicago Booth, Berkeley Haas, Northwestern Kellogg, Columbia, or the like are not exactly champing at the bit to place at ASU). In fact, his CV indicates that rather than being a research superstar, he may be a teaching superstar, given his numerous textbooks and impressive number of teaching awards. But ironically he apparently doesn’t want to teach much. </p>
<p><a href=“http://wpcarey.asu.edu/apps/directory/facultyDocs/pro_Neck_1049639.doc[/url]”>http://wpcarey.asu.edu/apps/directory/facultyDocs/pro_Neck_1049639.doc</a></p>
<p>{Note, if the above discussion seemed harshly judgmental and elitist, well, I actually agree that it is, but whether we like it or not, these are the sorts of characterizations being made every day by students and especially faculty at the top business schools. Academia has an ineluctable status hierarchy predicated on what journals you’ve published in and how many articles you’ve published in those journals. It’s now become somewhat of a meme that PhD students need an A-level publication just to even place at a decent business school, and certainly you ought to have far more than 1 A-level pub after 13 years of professorship. If you want to see a real research superstar, consider [Andras</a> Tilcsik](<a href=“http://scholar.harvard.edu/tilcsik/pages/research-and-publications]Andras”>http://scholar.harvard.edu/tilcsik/pages/research-and-publications), who already has 2 A-level publications, and one in revise-and-resubmit and he’s still just a student.}</p>
<p>But perhaps we should congratulate him: he was apparently able to finagle the limited teaching responsibilities accorded to a research superstar - at least until now - without actually being a research superstar.</p>
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<p>But he doesn’t seem to have heavy research responsibilities, or if he does, then he’s not taking them seriously. He hasn’t published an A-level journal research article in 13 years. His latest works have, ironically, been a textbook and a research article in a management education journal (and, frankly, a low-level one at that) - both such projects being pertinent to teaching, not research per se.</p>
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<p>I might actually have some sympathy towards this argument if he had actually been producing significant research during the (presumably) slightly more than 2 years when he enjoyed the lightened teaching load. But he doesn’t seem to have done so. In addition to not having published any A-level research articles in over a decade, he hasn’t even presented at conference - which is generally the first step towards publishing - since 2006. </p>
<p>I therefore think it is entirely fair to ask what exactly has Professor Neck been doing with his time during the last 2 years, and how has it justified his status as a professor at a research university such as ASU.</p>
<p>This is why I encouraged my kids to attend smaller liberal arts colleges where teaching was a valued activity. I didn’t want them to be Anonymous Student #476 in a lecture hall where someone who didn’t want to be there was pontificating into a microphone off in the distance.</p>
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<p>Adding a section of the same course probably means an extra three hours per week. But adding the different course would add more preparation time as well. It is likely that the paper and test grading in these big introductory level courses is done by graduate student TAs.</p>
<p>From chatting with Profs, teaching 4-5 undergrad classes/sections a year is considered a heavy teaching load and is viewed as something more typical for LACs than large research universities. University Profs…especially top researchers or those viewed with potential for such are usually given much lighter teaching loads in the hopes of producing research that brings the university more research dollars and fame/prestige.* </p>
<p>A major reason why research productivity/potential is considered much more highly than everything else when it comes to tenure and promotions at research universities…especially the teaching of undergrads. In fact, I’ve heard from some Profs and read that winning teaching awards and praises from undergrads could actually be a “kiss of death” at some universities when it comes to tenure as other senior faculty would perceive the great teacher as “not prioritizing research seriously enough” and sometimes even “pandering” to the undergrad students. </p>
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<li>Most university rankings I’ve seen tended to place overwhelming emphasis on faculty research productivity/potential, not teaching quality. If the latter was a priority, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a dramatic shift in those rankings…even at the very elite universities. After all, not every top renowned research scholar in a given field…even Nobel Prize winners are good or even passable in teaching undergrads. Especially freshmen with little/no previous exposure to the fields. We’re also not considering the headaches they perceive from teaching students who aren’t serious in class and/or whose K-12 preparation was such that they need some/much remedial instruction. That was one factor in why most top faculty from CCNY chose to bail elsewhere when that school went from being a highly selective “Poor Man’s Harvard” to admitting everyone with a high school diploma/GED with the implementation of “Open admissions” in the mid-late '60s.</li>
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<p>And which makes me wonder - why would anyone want to send their kids to such places for undergraduate education?</p>
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<p>An undergraduate student who is looking for research and/or is advanced enough to want to take graduate-level courses as an undergraduate may find such opportunities better there. And many of the faculty are good at teaching, even if teaching is not a top criterion for selection and promotion.</p>
<p>He can always transfer and play for another team. Good luck with that.</p>
<p>The big vs. little school debate makes me chuckle at times. When I told my dad, a professor at UT-Austin since 1965, that an athletic student from our area would be attending Dartmouth, he said, “Why in the world would he want to go to a little school like that?!?” From Dad’s viewpoint, a large university offers opportunities and classes that students could never get at small schools. He did pioneering research back in the 1960s in an engineering field and has been going strong ever since. The reason he doesn’t retire, though, is his students. He LOVES teaching. He has taught generations of engineers. If you asked almost any structural engineer in Texas, they would know him.</p>
<p>Also, my favorite class at UT was American History, taught by George Forgie. There were over 300 students in the class. Wow, what a gifted storyteller he was (and still is, 30 years later). I couldn’t wait to go to his class to hear his lectures. He assigned a boatload of books for us to read, long tomes such as “Path Between the Seas,” about the building of the Panama Canal. He was always available for questions. I would have missed out on an incredible learning experience if I hadn’t enrolled in such a “scary” big class.</p>
<p>cobrat, Dad has received many teaching and advising awards at UT. I don’t think they hurt his career, lol.</p>
<p>I spent six years at Texas (BS and MS in Engineering) and never regretted a minute of it. Being a female valedictorian, etc., etc., etc. I could have gotten admitted to a lot of other schools, too.</p>
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<p>The outliers, perhaps. Faculty members who teach because they have to are not going to be good teachers. Entertaining lecturers, perhaps, but not teachers.</p>
<p>So if there are all these advantages of big universities for undergraduates, why do university professors choose to send their own kids to LACs?</p>
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<p>[Where</a> Professors Send Their Children to College - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37244508/where-professors-send-their-children-to-college/]Where”>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37244508/where-professors-send-their-children-to-college/)</p>
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<p>[Three</a> tips from The Thinking Student’s Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education by Andrew Roberts](<a href=“Three tips from The Thinking Student's Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education by Andrew Roberts”>Three tips from The Thinking Student's Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education by Andrew Roberts)</p>
<p>It’s true that liberal arts colleges are best for people who need a lot of hand-holding.</p>
<p>Seriously, though, there are trade-offs. I suspect that it’s true that LAC classroom teaching is, on average, better than at research universities. But plenty of research universities have plenty of excellent classroom teaching, and they have other advantages as well. I would also add that at a large university, students often have the power to find out which professors are good and bad teachers, and to build schedules that focus on the good teachers.</p>
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<p>YMMV in my experience and those of various HS and college classmates who did undergrad at reputable LACs and grad school at elite universities…including Ivies. </p>
<p>Different universities have differing standards of what constitutes “graduate-level courses”. </p>
<p>From what I’ve heard from those classmates and my own experiences taking grad courses at an Ivy…what’s labeled as “graduate courses” could wary wildly…sometimes their levels were taught at the equivalent or even lower than that of intermediate-advanced undergrad research colloquiums/seminars offered at our respective LACs. This included grad students in STEM subjects. Fortunately, their grad programs/advisors often allow them to skip straight into more advanced courses so they can advance in their studies.</p>
<p>It’s just not one size fits all. Even at liberal arts colleges some students will have mentors who provide amazing opportunities equal (or superior) to having access to graduate programs. But probably a student who finds the premed curriculum at a major university not as challenging as high school, will not be well served by a LAC.</p>
<p>And thinking about where faculty kids go to college… some schools offer free tuition to their own faculty’s dependents. Some schools have exchange programs with other schools for faculty kids. Some schools have tuition assistance programs. For some faculty members, looking at schools for their kids is even more complicated than for the regular CC reader.</p>
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cobrat: At universities there will be courses cross-listed for senior/grad students. If those courses are still too elementary for advanced undergrads, there are higher level graduate courses…as you pointed out. There are also professors and labs available for independent work.</p>
<p>I know there are opportunities available for independent work at LACs also.</p>
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<p>Which makes it even more telling that professors at universities tend to send their kids to LACs.</p>