Another reason why faculty matter: do the math

This blog is about something I learned on returning to the faculty after 23 years of being a senior administrator. It is not earth shattering. I suspect many readers have thought about it. But, I never did. It's about math and time.

​Who spends the most time with students (other than resident assistants in residence halls, or athletic coaches and their staff) at a university?

Student success (in many dimensions) has always meant a lot to me. As dean and provost, a lot of the work I did was building infrastructure to support student success-- & there was definitely a correlation between building that infrastructure and marginal increases in success in retention and graduation.

Yet, I always knew, & the Purdue-Gallup poll shows, that the interactions of faculty with students is generally what defines a student experience and is what graduates remember. I know that I remember every faculty member who taught me (good or bad), and I have paid forward the way the best of those faculty interacted with me. I don't remember a single administrative or student support individual (accept the dean of the forestry school of Maine for other reasons).

Being back on the faculty, I now understand why the interactions of faculty with most students are way more important in the long run than student support services.

Why? It's about time.

In my 3 credit classes, students are in-person with me for 52 hrs over 14 weeks. No matter how many students, I engage with each of the them. Their course evaluations make it clear the engagement makes a difference. Students are also with me digitally in Canvas or email for another 5-10 hrs (or mores) over 14 weeks- many of those digital conversations are significant, not just rote .

There are no administrative support individuals (except maybe student RAs in dorms; and athletic coaches and their staff) that come close to being with a student for 62 hours over 14 weeks. And, I teach between 130 & 230 students per semester & I engage with all of them. There is definitely no student success support worker that can engage 230 students each for 62 hours over 14 weeks.

As an administrator, I concluded that the support infrastructure was really important for a small percentage of students who might not succeed without it. Mental health services are also critical now. I knew faculty were important, but I never did the math.

It's interesting to me that the conservative narrative is that faculty don't work hard enough and don't have such strong influences on students, except with possibly brain-washing them with liberal ideas (really?- how many people are really that malleable? Apparently the majority in the Congress weren't that malleable. Most faculty I know want students to learn their subjects and critically think about the world). In any case, when universities go into budget cuts due to enrollment, they reduce the faculty (part of that is because that is where a lot of the money is spent) & try to make up for it in student success employees to retain students. When you think about the math, maybe that doesn't make much sense.

It was frustrating as provost and vp for research, that in so many conversations in leadership meetings (e.g., Chancellor's council), faculty often were disparaged, particularly by the non-academic leadership, and sometimes even academics.

When I do the math, I realized the amount of time students are with faculty.  it changes how I think about student success and where resources (particularly time and money) should be allocated. With respect to time, I can engage with 230 students a semester, but I work 80 hours/week to do that only because I care (there are no expectations to do that). Give me 400 students, there is not enough time in the day.

Don't get me wrong, student success support services matter. Yet, their effect is on the margins, particularly focused largely on students that are struggling or need that support. They also provide services for those that aren't, and I don't take that lightly.  But, in recent years, it seems that there can be a reverse perspective where senior administration start to see that faculty interactions with students are on the margins, and that student success services are at the core. 

Some of reasons administrators do that is the way administrators are evaluated, i.e., you can take credit for building student success infrastructure and celebrate a 3% increase and retention and graduation as an accomplishment. That is not trivial.  I certainly touted that sort of success when I was dean and provost. There is a reality though that I could not (or any administrator) claim credit for what happened in each individual classroom other than touting the quality of faculty I helped hire and/or retained.

In my current university, it seems now that faculty are thought of as interchangeable commodities, which doesn't make as much sense if you do the math.

Even though the impacts of student success services is significant to students and financially important to the university, the percentage of the students that are significantly affected is on the margins. The vast majority of the experience of most students is defined by their interactions with faculty. For them, the other support service just need to work.

There is a reason that universities (particularly the most elite) tout their low student:faculty ratios- I have yet to see a university that celebrated increases in student:faculty ratios and decreases in student: staff ratios. The ironic thing is that the student:faculty ratios are often lowest in colleges and universities where the students least need interactions with faculty to succeed, and highest in universities where faculty can really help transform the trajectory of someone's life.

The older I get, the less angry I get about the ridiculous ironies (which is good for my health) since they are everywhere. But, I find myself more discombobulated every day by them at the international, national, local and in my university. It is as if I keep finding myself in some altered reality. A really hard part for me of growing old is watching myself become irrelevant. Another really hard part is not recognizing the reality of where I am. When did 2+2 start equaling -10?

When I do the math of which employees spend the most time with students, it changes how I might think about student success, if I had the opportunity to be a dean or provost again (which is not going to happen). Perhaps you have known this and find it amazing that I just now did the math. I got "A"s in in three semester of calculus and crushed linear algebra, and used that understanding in my research, but math is definitely not my strong point. LOL..

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