Here is an article in The Chronicle about moves in Florida to incorporate Texas principles into studies of faculty productivity in the state. Governor Rick Scott is looking to “revamp higher education in his state,” Audrey Williams June reports, and he has complimented Texas and Governor Rick Perry on their efforts. No policies have been decided, but the conversation has begun, and the union of public-university professors is worried.
The president of Florida State University, Eric J. Barron, has issued a preemptive response paper entitled “Florida Can Do Better Than Texas,” which can be accessed here. It is a critique of the Texas plan put forward by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which may be accessed here. Although a critique, the FSU paper does applaud the Texas plan for aiming to lower costs and strengthen teaching. It disputes not the aim, but the method (primarily, the Texas reliance on too-few and overly-narrow measures).
The point here is that accountability and productivity examinations are going to spread no matter what the faculty and the unions say about it. In fact, I think faculty productivity shall be the central policy issue in higher education in the next five years—more than access, diversity, STEM, or political correctness. When tuition goes up and parents protest, attention will turn to faculty research and teaching costs. When the adjunct issue arises, the same thing will happen, as it will when cuts to the humanities, increased class sizes, and financial aid take their turn.
This is not to say that faculty productivity reviews will yield changes in employment policies (such as heavier teaching loads) that will solve all those problems noted above. Rather, faculty productivity is a fairly new topic that provides universities and their administrators an area in which to address those problems (effectively or ineffectively). In other words, for decision makers and purse string holders in higher education, faculty productivity is a promising, if inadequate, site of reform, a place to relieve the university of certain outside pressures.
