Monday, January 16, 2006

The federal reserve and higher education

An economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve has some things to say about productivity in higher education. I don't think he's a fan of student evaluations:

... the use of student evaluations to judge the quality of faculty may lead some faculty to abandon good teaching practices and augment their evaluations through alternative means, such as leniency on grading, on assignment deadlines and on student absenteeism.

or tenure:

Tenure prevents significant staffing changes in response to changes in student demands; tenure also prevents lower quality faculty from being replaced by higher quality faculty.