Jeffery P. Bieber

Minority vs. Majority Faculty Publication Performance: A Research Note

Abstract: Using the data collected by the 1988 National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty, the authors compare the publication rates for African American, Asian American, and Hispanic faculty with those of Caucasian faculty when the N’s are of sufficient size to run meaningful t-tests. The findings do not support the frequently advanced claim that fewer minority faculty receive promotion and tenure because of fewer publications.

Faculty at work: Focus on teaching

Within the framework of cognitive motivation theory, selected personal and environmental motivational variables for faculty in English, chemistry, and psychology from community colleges, comprehensive colleges and universities, and research universities were regressed against faculty allocation of work effort given to teaching. The data came from a 1988 national survey. Gender (sociodemographic); quality of graduate school attended, career age, and rank (career); self-competence, self-efficacy, institutional commitment, personal interest in teaching, and percent time preferred to give to teaching (self-valuations); and institutional preference, consensus and support, and colleague commitment to teaching (perception of the environment) were entered into regressions.R2 were generally strong (.86 for community college chemists) and significant. For all institutional types, self-valuation and perception of the environment motivators significantly accounted for the explained variance whereas sociodemographic and career variables did not.

Faculty Research Productivity 1972-1988: Development and Application of Constant Units of Measure.

The economic concept ofreal orconstant units of measure is utilized to assess the rate of inflation/deflation of opportunity for publication between 1972 and 1988 for the disciplines of biology, psychology, and English. Data for the study came from (1)Ulrichs International Periodicals Directory; (2)Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature; (3)American Universities and Colleges; (4) 570 journal issues across the three disciplines; and (5) national surveys of faculty conducted in 1972, 1980, and 1988. Based on changes over time in the amount of space in which faculty can publish their research and the number of individuals competing for that space, indexes are developed that convert 1988 publication counts into 1972 equivalents. Results indicate inflation rates of 103, 85, and -45 percent for biology, psychology, and English, respectively, between 1972 and 1988. Due to these rates, faculty had to produce 14.65, 5.05, and 1.18 articles, respectively, in the two years prior to 1988 to have been as productive inreal articles as they were in the two years prior to 1972.

Cultural Capital as an Interpretive Framework for Faculty Life

Today’s college and university faculty remain an important topic of study in the world of contemporary higher education. Part of this importance stems from the increasing variation we see with respect to many facets of faculty life. For example, intellectual specialization within disciplines has led to seemingly innumerable sub-specializations such that colleagues within the same department have difficulty communicating; shifting “resource streams” have favored certain academic areas and disadvantaged others such that faculty previously well-supported now find themselves struggling to keep their research programs intact; new pedagogical challenges abound, such as the arrival of internet courses and other forms of distance education, to which some faculty respond readily and to which others respond only grudgingly. Not that faculty members have ever been a particularly monolithic or uniform lot, the increasing complexity and variation that have defined academic life historically continue to persist; it is easy to see that for all we know about faculty, much remains undiscovered and unprobed.

Faculty and Online Education as a Mechanism of Power.

This study uses a critical perspective to examine how online education is used in brick-and-mortar institutions as a mechanism through which power is exercised by and against professors who teach online. Based on a larger study of 25 professors and administrators at four institutions, this work focuses on the experiences of 12 professors. Foucault’s conceptualization of power framed our interpretation of interviews conducted with these professors. Our findings suggest online education enhanced faculty autonomy and visibility, but that it was also used to control faculty members, and for some professors, it was used to alter their professional identities.