The Catch-22 of Scholarship

In the higher education system, students are served by two groups: the scholars who create knowledge and the teachers who disseminate it. Unlike the criminal justice system, however, these groups are neither separate nor equally important. Both are embodied in the tenured faculty — and apparently, teaching barely matters.

It has long been the practice in American universities that faculties are comprised of experts in their respective academic fields: those who have earned the highest academic degrees with demonstrated scholarly contributions and promises of continued productivity. At major research universities, tenured faculty focus on their research and the training of the next generation of scholars through graduate courses. A significant percentage of undergraduate courses are taught by graduate students and folks like me — adjunct and part-time instructors who may not have the scholarly credentials to gain tenure, but who are career teachers.

Few students appreciate how much the system is rigged in one direction. In fact, the professors whose scholarly work helps to establish a university's academic reputation are not trained or hired primarily to teach students.

Yet, it is the students who also add to a top university's reputation through their own scholastic achievement and desire to attend, making it highly competitive and difficult to gain admission. Consciously or not, those students strike a bargain. They sacrifice a greater certainty of high-quality teaching for the reflected glow provided by academic stars they may never meet. In most cases that choice is clear when comparing smaller private liberal arts colleges and larger public universities.

Georgetown is a different kind of animal: It is one of about 100 schools in the highest category of research universities as established by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, only about one-third of which are private. Among those, Georgetown is one of the most poorly endowed and, in fact, carries one of the thinner research portfolios. For example, as an institution steeped in the humanities, where every undergraduate takes classes in theology and English, Georgetown has only recently upgraded to confer doctoral degrees in the former and still does not in the latter. If this were the Big East, we might as well be Providence.

That's okay, because despite its academic aspirations, Georgetown has never quite felt like most major research universities. Not to me, anyway, and I suspect not to most of the Georgetown students who carry fond memories of legendary professors who took personal interests in their students' lives. I told friends after my first week on campus that this was a university with the soul of a liberal arts college, which was what appealed to me as an administrator and a teacher.

But Georgetown could be in danger of compromising that soul in a misguided attempt to climb a ladder whose apex it can never reach. Georgetown is already in higher demand among students than some better-endowed, more active research universities, and it is unlikely to acquire the resources to overtake those that already boast both a higher research profile and a tougher admissions ticket. You know who they are, and they are not going anywhere. So why get sucked into a no-win game of hiring researchers without regard to their demonstrated excellence in teaching?

Consider your favorite Georgetown professors. Unless you have actually worked with them on a research project, do you know their specific area of academic inquiry? Did you ever read anything they wrote if she did not assign it? Do you care?

On the other hand, did they help you learn to love the subject? Did they instill a confidence in you about your own abilities as a student? Did they help to make your Georgetown experience memorable and fulfilling? If so, that is a happy coincidence, because those are not the qualities that secured their employment. Indeed, the way things are now, professors might never be hired permanently if they have not secured contracts for a second book before the tenure clock runs out.

If that's what mattered most, you could read all the scholarly publications of every professor at Georgetown for less than $55,000 per year.

But of course, we don't really believe that is all that matters. Georgetown should have the courage of its educational convictions and embrace its unique position in the academic marketplace. People now debate the value of a college education even as they continue to pay steep prices to separate themselves more than ever from those who do not. This is a place that can legitimately confer both eye-popping car-decal prestige and a transformative learning experience provided by dedicated educators. Georgetown simply needs to trust its own history, believe its own rhetoric and recreate a culture of academic engagement that demands high standards for teaching as well as scholarship.

Dennis Williams is the associate dean of students and a lecturer in the English Department.