College Teaching and Research

In response to “For Profs, Teach or Perish?” Jan. 10:

The teaching vs. research debate that is currently raging misses a fundamental point: Even if faculty at research universities taught, say, 25% more courses as some are proposing, the things that are wrong with undergraduate teaching at research universities would barely be touched. Reduce 500-student classes to 400-student classes; is that really going to make much of a difference?

Research universities are in fact drastically understaffed in faculty. Top undergraduate colleges with a strong teaching emphasis and small classes, such as my alma mater Pomona College, have faculty-student ratios just under double what UC campuses have.

That does not tell even half the story, however. In a research university--in contrast to undergraduate colleges--professors not only do research, but also extensive graduate teaching, which is extremely labor-intensive. The close reading and evaluation of a draft of a Ph.D. student’s 400-page doctoral dissertation can take as long as reading 30 term papers or exams.

You cannot get blood out of a turnip. Faculty already teach huge classes, advise students, administer education programs and research institutes, write several grant proposals for every one funded, carry out research, and do community service.

If you want small classes and close attention to undergraduates by professors who must also do research and teach graduate students, then UC campuses need four to five times as many professors as they have now.

Finally, the $75,000 average salary figure for full professors is distorted by two things: Faculty in a few professional schools such as medicine and business make high salaries, which raise the average--the great majority make much less. Second, senior faculty hired in the 1950s and 1960s, when university systems were expanding and Ph.D.s were scarce, were promoted more rapidly than is happening now. Most of us will not so much as reach that “average” on the day we retire. Women and minorities do even less well.

MARCIA J. BATES

Professor, UCLA