Stanford Head Calls for a Return to Basic Teaching

Stanford University puts too much emphasis on scholarly work and not enough on basic teaching of undergraduates, president Donald Kennedy said Thursday in a wide-ranging speech that echoes a growing criticism of higher education expressed by heads of top research institutions.

In his annual “state-of-the-campus” address to Stanford faculty, Kennedy vowed to change the university’s tenure process to place more weight on teaching and less emphasis on research and scholarship.

“Teaching and research are both important. But the relative emphasis has shifted over time, as the relatively new term research university suggests,” Kennedy said in his speech at Stanford’s law school. “It is time for us to reaffirm that education--that is, teaching in all its forms--is the primary task, and that our society will judge us in the long run on how well we do it.”

A growing number of educators, including Harvard President Derek Bok, have made similar evaluations of America’s premier research universities for losing touch with undergraduate students. These leaders advocate a shift away from the emphasis on scholarly work that has dominated American universities for the past century. Increasingly, educators argue that U.S. colleges must play a bigger role in improving education at all levels, not just among postgraduate students.

Educators, business executives and political leaders have long been alarmed about the poor performance of U.S. students, particularly in basic subjects such as math, science and English. While they acknowledge that much of the blame lies with elementary schools and high schools, they stress that the nation’s colleges and universities must also take a substantial share of the responsibility for the nation’s disregard for teaching.

Kennedy’s remarks follow years of criticism about university hiring and promotion policies both by established education groups such as the Carnegie Foundation, as well as by women and minority-group leaders. According to these critics, traditional tenure policies with their emphasis on the “publish or perish” doctrine place too little importance on basic teaching skills. And these policies also tend to exclude minorities and women who may be good teachers but who have not always elected to focus their energies on advance research projects, critics say.

Other universities have also been re-evaluating their tenure decisions to place more weight on teaching. Over the last 15 years, for example, the University of California system has placed increasing teaching demands on faculty members who apply for tenure--that is, permanent employment. Not only must they demonstrate an ability to do research, they must also prove they care about teaching and are competent at it.

Kennedy’s criticism of his own institution comes at a time when Stanford’s image as vastly wealthy and powerful has been under siege. The October earthquake caused $160 million in damage to the campus. More shocking was the February announcement of a 13% budget cut--$22 million from a $175-million annual base. Faculty and staff, who previously felt supremely secure, suddenly fear layoffs and, indeed, the athletics department recently cut some coaching and support positions.

In his talk, titled “Stanford in Its Second Century,” Kennedy suggested that trimming some bureaucracy and programs would be beneficial. He announced what he called “a major change at the top” to streamline the school’s bureaucracy. He will decentralize decision-making on campus and give deans of individual schools powers previously held by university-wide vice presidents.

The aim, Kennedy said, is to encourage “a more democratic style, with increased opportunities for students and staff to have a significant say in determining how Stanford is run.” He also urged faculty and administrators to spend less time on the committee meetings that seem to dominate campus life at many universities.

“We are told by many faculty and staff members that our community is losing some things we value: a feeling of collegiality, a pace that is hospitable to reflection, an informal kind of comfort with one another. . . . We can make the university a more focused and efficient place, with a more human scale, if we can agree to do without certain things,” he said.

Kennedy, who has been president of Stanford for 10 years, offered few specific cures for the decline in undergraduate teaching, other than mentioning the success of some interdisciplinary and honors programs. Top administrators will be studying the matter over the next few months in what Kennedy described as “among our most important objectives for the remainder of this academic year and those that follow.”

In a telephone interview Thursday, Kennedy said, “I don’t think we are going to do this by legislating heavier teaching loads.” But he said he hopes to expand the use of independent studies and tutorials between undergraduate students and professors who previously have concentrated on graduate instruction.

Reaction among faculty members and administrators to Kennedy’s address was mixed, with some saying they needed more time to digest his comments.

Thomas Wascow, dean of undergraduate studies, said he was not sure how the faculty would respond to Kennedy’s recommendations. “It’s going to take a change in faculty culture and it’s a culture that’s not local to Stanford,” Wascow said. “It may take a change in the criteria to decide tenure at Stanford.”

Stanford’s undergraduates are already luckier than most. Although they pay whopping tuition rates--more than $20,000 a year--they have a student-teacher ratio of about 10 to 1--far lower than many major universities and even some small liberal arts colleges that specialize in undergraduate teaching.

The problem at Stanford, as with many first-class universities, is that too many professors try to escape the classroom to pursue their own research interests. As a result, Kennedy said, undergraduate education at Stanford “presents us with some troubling symptoms.” For example, he said, too many courses are taught by visiting or temporary faculty and too many gifted teachers are denied tenure based on judgments about their research.