Jay Schalin explains in a Martin Center column the deficiencies in a new report on UNC faculty teaching responsibilities.
Reliable information is a prerequisite for good management. How can you make intelligent decisions if you are basing them on shaky information?
This has been an ongoing problem for the University of North Carolina system, in which many high-level decisions are made by a governing board composed of part-time. The main problem is that they must rely on information that is often self-interested or one-sided; much of it may not stand up to closer analysis from knowledgeable, disinterested education professionals but can get past non-experts.
One glaring example is a recent system administration report on faculty teaching loads presented in the Education Planning Committee at the July 25-27 Board of Governors meeting.
The report begins with a claim that:
From 2008 to 2015, eleven of fifteen UNC System [campuses] remained consistent or increased the average number of sections taught by all faculty, and ten remained consistent or increased the average number of student credit hours taught by all faculty.
That sounds like a cause for celebration, as if the system as a whole was increasing its faculty productivity. …
… My results were conclusive: my figures for the average number of courses taught for tenured and tenure-track faculty were consistently lower than those computed by the UNC system. The difference was a slight .1 sections per semester at UNC-Charlotte and 1.7 courses per semester at UNC-Greensboro. Even at UNC-Asheville and Elizabeth City, which have no graduate programs and the computations are particularly easy, the differences were .6 and .3, respectively.