Texas Public Policy Foundation July 7, 2011 --- "The Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education recently formed to defend the status quo against the efforts of university regents to promote transparency and accountability in higher education.
Yet there is much about the status quo that simply cannot be defended.
Higher education today needs reform in two ways. First, by reducing its staggeringly and unnecessarily high costs; and second, by increasing instructional quality, which has suffered as many good professors have taken themselves out of the classroom to be replaced with inexperienced part-timers and teaching assistants.
When I began university teaching in the 1960s, the average teaching load was five classes per semester. It then dropped to four classes, then to three, and now commonly to two or even one class per semester. Reduced teaching loads permitted professors to conduct research.
The 1970s began a glut of Ph.D. graduates. I watched it happen with my colleagues. With more applicants applying for fewer positions, administrators needed new ways to distinguish among qualified candidates. It became difficult to assess teaching abilities of new Ph.D. graduates, and the focus switched to their publications...............[Ronald L. Towbridge continues]....................."
Ronald L. Trowbridge, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. Trowbridge formerly served as vice president of Hillsdale College in Michigan.