A study conducted by the Texas A&M University system is trying to quantify how much money professors make or lose for their school — tuition dollars they bring in, in numbers of students taught, and grant dollars received versus how much money they're paid — reports Huffington Post's Amanda Fairbanks. Though Texas A&M's Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Frank Ashley admits the study is "deeply flawed," Fairbanks says, many academics worry that such systems could be used to make employment decisions as schools look to trim their budgets. "With the economy where it is right now, everyone wants to make sure they're getting the most out of what they're paying for," Fairbanks quotes Ashley as saying.
At Blue Lab Coats, DrdrA has just three words to describe this quantification of professors: "Wrong. So wrong." Texas A&M administrators should be ashamed of themselves, she says. Higher education isn't a business and running it as such misses the point that the real value of what professors are doing isn't in how much tuition money they bring in, but the "quality of the students we put out into the world," she says.