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One of the biggest challenges facing higher education over the next twenty years is the aging academic workforce. A survey of 32,840 faculty members at 358 two- and four-year colleges by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, as reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, documented this well-known phenomenon. "In 2001, 35 percent of all full-time faculty members were 55 or older compared with 32 percent in 1998 and 25 percent in 1989" (Wilson, 2002).
The effects of this trend are widespread, including higher health care costs, a smaller proportion of untenured faculty in departments, and less job changing by academics. Of profound concern is the decline in scholarly productivity that often accompanies aging. Having reached the peaks of the careers, many academics find little incentive to stay active in their professions outside the classroom.
The Organizational Systems Research Association (OSRA) has suffered from this trend. Our annual research meeting has seen declines both in the number of papers submitted and in attendance over the past few years. Active members have retired, and many current members are much less productive than in the past. Although reductions in travel budgets and in the willingness to travel have also taken their toll, a certain amount of the drop in participation is due to aging scholars reducing their research output.
At the same time, however, we have increasingly called upon our students to subscribe to a philosophy of life long learning. We tell them that their careers will be dynamic, and that the technologies in which they are now expert will be obsolete in just a few years. We devote a lot of time to teaching them how to teach themselves, so that they can acquire new skills in a rapidly changing business environment.
Am I the only one that detects a whiff of hypocrisy here? While challenging our students to continue to develop throughout their working lives, we are cutting back our professional activities and declining new challenges ourselves. We are setting bad examples for our students and harming our professional societies.
OSRA is lucky to have a dedicated core of professionals who serve on the board, review papers for the Journal, and participate in the conference. Our new curriculum was developed by an outstanding group of caring academics and practitioners. These groups are not self-perpetuating, however. They depend on the continuing support of like-minded scholars and professionals. We welcome the participation of younger people at the beginning of their careers, of course. The future of our organization depends on our ability to recruit and retain these new members.
Equally important, however, is the continuing participation of senior faculty, administrators, and business people, who bring wisdom, insight, and experience to our association. Set a good example for your students by exhibiting that capacity for life long professional development. You will find the rewards are substantial.
ABOUT THIS ISSUE
This issue blends research about research and research about teaching with articles that present novel approaches to classroom instruction. Carol Blaszczynski of California State University, Los Angeles, and James Calvert Scott of Utah State University compare literature searches using electronic and print compendia. They find that the now discontinued Business Education Index is a more reliable source for information retrieval than several popular electronic databases.
S. E. Kruck and Diane Lending of James Madison University have developed a model to predict success in the introductory information systems course. They find motivation and grade point average are good predictors, but that SAT scores seem to predict performance only for male students.
Catherine Chen of Ball State University compares behavioral, cognitive, and constructivist approaches to teaching. She finds the constructivist approach much more effective in teaching computer networking. She presents several interesting classroom exercises that illustrate the utility of this approach.
Finally, Michel Mitri of James Madison University describes the use of a decision support system by students to evaluate companies and products. The tools he has developed give students exposure to expert system technology and multi-attribute utility models while enhancing their ability to analyze technology firms and their offerings.
REFERENCE
Wilson, R. (2002). A kinder, less ambitious professoriate. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 49(11), A10. Retrieved March 28, 2004 from http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v49/i11/11a010 01.htm
Copyright Organizational Systems Research Association Fall 2003