Dive Brief:
- A bill proposed in North Carolina’s senate would require all public school professors to teach at least four courses per semester, potentially obliterating the research model at the state’s flagship universities.
- Rebecca Schuman at Slate expects this bill, if passed, to cause a serious brain drain in North Carolina as the state’s pre-eminent researchers look for public or private universities elsewhere that would fund their research.
- The worst part, Schuman writes, is that the bill could pass under the current political climate in the North Carolina General Assembly.
Dive Insight:
The university system is set up with various levels of faculty. Adjuncts and lecturers focus on teaching. Junior faculty are often given heavier courseloads. But tenure track professors and those already tenured, hired much more for their research capabilities than their teaching chops, are not expected to spend most of their time in the classroom. Their primary contribution to the institution is producing groundbreaking work in that school’s name. This bill would change the status quo and make higher education in North Carolina about training students to the near exclusion of research. It would be debilitating, and, as Schuman points out, if it were considered a success in North Carolina, it would likely spread to other states.