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In community colleges, who delivers instruction is more important in driving costs than what is taught.
Introduction
Over the past 25 years, higher education has come under increased pressure to become more accountable in containing costs and more effective and efficient in managing human and fiscal resources. Zemsky and Massy (1990, p. 22), in an important article in Change titled "Cost Containment: Committing to a New Economic Reality," contend that higher education institutions have reduced faculty teaching and advising loads in favor of other non-teaching, non-student-centered activities to the point where "undergraduates are paying more to attend institutions in which they receive less faculty attention than in previous decades." Henry Rosovsky (1992, p. 3A), former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard University, argues that faculty, when viewed as a social organism, operate
without a written constitution and with very little common law. That is a poor combination, especially when there is no consensus concerning duties or standards of behavior.... Faculty behavior has been quite rational and understandable, given the absence of constraints.
Criticism of faculty is not limited to scholarly publications. Mel Elfin, former executive editor of U.S. News & World Report's annual college ranking survey, contends that faculty are a major factor in escalating tuitions: "Rarely mentioned are the on-campus causes of the tuition crisis: declining teaching loads, ...ballooning administrative hierarchies, ...and inflated course offerings. If colleges and universities were rated on their overall financial acumen, most would be lucky to escape with a passing grade" (Elfin 1996, p. 92).
In 1997, the U.S. Congress created a National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. The commission was charged with the responsibility for developing recommendations that would guide and inform public policy with respect to cost containment. Among the recommendations of the commission was a call for
individual institutions, acting with technical support from appropriate higher education associations, [to] conduct efficiency self-reviews to identify effective cost-saving steps that are relevant to institutional mission and quality improvement. Academic leaders should communicate the results of these self-reviews widely, providing the campus community and institutional constituents with information on such issues as ... faculty teaching loads, average class size, [and] faculty and student ratios. (Harvey et al. 1998, p. 16)
As...