Robert Smith, provost at Texas Tech, says, in the Houston Chronicle, that professors at public universities are moonlighting at the for-profits.
… During a panel discussion on “For-Profit Education” at the July 2010 meeting of the Council on Academic Affairs of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) in Portland, Ore., the president of The Art Institute of Portland and the chief academic officer at the University of Phoenix (UP) were questioned about how many members of their faculties held full-time jobs at public institutions.
… [T]he UP official responded: “Oh, we hire a lot of your faculty,” meaning faculty members in the 188 public institutions represented by APLU.
A follow-up question revolved around measures UP does or does not take to determine if those same public institution employees have permission from their public employers to teach at UP, which has more than 450,000 students, with all but 100,000 taking courses online. The response: “We leave that up to the individual.” Finally, the UP official was asked whether UP would be willing to publish names and addresses of its faculty employees. His reply: “We’ll have to think about that.” [What sort of university doesn’t list its faculty members? In its catalogue?]
… Are the profits of UP and other for-profit institutions coming at the expense of taxpayers — federal and state – as well as parents and students paying tuition at public institutions?
This is a new one on UD, some extra-credit corruption in an already impressively corrupt industry.
No wonder that Cal State Bakersfield professor handling 700 online students in an intro math class had trouble getting many of them to pass the course. The same guy was probably handling 14,000 Phoenix students.
August 16th, 2010 at 10:17AM
What I’m amazed by is that the profs have time to moonlight. I’m a single, childless woman (no cats or dogs, even) and I count it as a good day when I have time after class and after doing research to cook a dinner more elaborate than a fried egg.
Or maybe I’m doing it wrong? By not “outsourcing” my grading and such?
August 16th, 2010 at 10:59AM
ricki: I’m going to bet you’re doing everything wrong.
One, yes, you’re not outsourcing your grading to India. One of my colleagues at GW can help you with that.
Two: Are you showing lots of films during class? Inviting many guest lecturers? Cancelling as often as possible? Organizing students into groups during class and having them teach each other?
These are only a few initial suggestions. There are many other things you can do.
August 16th, 2010 at 1:15PM
Years ago one of my CUNY colleagues on a typical teaching-intensive appointment campaigned hard to get a permanent load reduction. He needed the extra time not for research but in order to seek paid overloads to goose his pension in the four years prior to his retirement.