How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream

Why We're Paying More and Getting Less in Higher Education

Richard M. Huber

• Publisher: University Publishing Association
• Year: 1993
• eBook ISBN: 9781461675747
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

This book is a "must read" for every parent who has ever signed a check for tuition, every student who has ever wondered where all the distinguished professors are hiding, and everyone else who has ever questioned what faculty do with themselves all day.
In this lucid and engaging account, Richard Huber identifies faculty productivity as the major reason why college tuition at America's most prestigious institutions rose at more than twice the rate of inflation throughout the 1980s. He argues that at the heart of the productivity issue lies an organization with two competing aims: research and teaching. The resulting organizational culture majors in genteel delusion.
Huber raises taboo subjects such as increased and differential faculty teaching loads, putting himself at the forefront of the new movement for increased accountability in our colleges. And he does so with humor, grace and empathy as one who has been inside the university. This is controversy with an impish grin!

Table of contents

• INTRODUCTION
• 1. CONFLICT/CORRESPONDENCE OF INTEREST
• 2. MISSION, TRUSTEES, AND THE PRESIDENT
• 3. THE EXERCISE OF AUTHORITY
• 4. THE FACULTY
• 5. CURRICULUM—“A BUZZING CONFUSION OF COMPLAINTS”
• 6. CURRICULUM—MULTICULTURALISM
• 7. STUDENTS
• 8. TUITION—STICKER PRICE
• 9. TUITION—COSTS AND BENEFITS
• 10. TUITION—WHERE IT GOES
• 11. EVALUATION AND SOME FOLLIES
• 12. DOABLES—IMPROVE QUALITY
• 13. DOABLES—CUT COSTS
• CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX A—THE IRONIES OF THE UNIVERSITY
• APPENDIX B—CARNEGIE CLASSIFICATIONS
• APPENDIX C—RANKINGS
• PERSONAL & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NOTES ON SOURCES