Special Problems of the Professor of Higher Education

The Review of Higher Education Fall 1980, Volume 4, No. 1 Pages 25 to 32 Copyright © 1980 Association for the Study of Higher Education All Rights Reserved SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF THE PROFESSOR OF HIGHER EDUCATION Jack H. Cooper* No one seems to know exactly what a professor of higher education is. Indeed, he or she is often seen as a ubiquitous figure on the campus. True, he teaches courses, he may publish in a wide variety of printed matter, he may be involved in some unclear grant-projects, and he may be performing certain pro tern services in the field. Graduate students seem to find higher education to be an attractive field of study. Administrators often don’t know what to do with the program in higher education. It’s different. It doesn’t fit the academic mold(s). It seems almost exotic. It is the contention of this writer that the professoriate in higher education confronts some very special problems due to (1) the nature of higher education as a field of study, (2) the nature of the professoriate in higher education, and (3) the campus environment of higher education as a field of study. Special Problems Due to the Nature of Higher Education as a Field of Study The inability to specialize is a problem of many higher educationists. The university reward system is predicated upon specialized expertise. The professor of English may be a Milton scholar. The professor of history may be a New Deal scholar. Other professors of education will specialize in public *Professor of Higher Education, Washington State University. 25 26 The Review of Higher Education school administration or elementary school curriculum or reading. On most campuses with a program in higher education there are few faculty members to staff it. One, two, or three professors are expected to maintain expertise on the history of higher education, higher education planning and evaluation, governance and administration, finance, curriculum, students as a subculture, student personnel services, the law and higher education, higher education as a field of study, postsecondary vocational and technical education, adult and continuing education, and the community college. Such a wide scope of demand upon the professor does not auger well for any sort of cumulative expertise in a limited subfield of higher education. It almost insures that the professor be a generalist. The dissertation load is often a problem of both nature and numbers. The breadth of the field requires that the professor of higher education make some hard decisions: should he chair dissertations whose subjects and/or methodol­ ogy are those about which he has scant knowledge—thus permitting his students to exercise maximum freedom of research choice, or should he restrict sponsorship to his more knowledgeable areas of research—thus limiting his students’ research? Should faculty members in other areas of expertise be invited to chair dissertations in higher education when it appears unfeasible for the professor of higher education to so serve? And what of the comparatively large numbers of dissertation-stage students in higher educa­ tion? How can the professor control his load and still render adequate dissertation research guidance to serve students unless such activity is included as a part of load? While some universities have such a policy, others do not. The function of providing field service presents special difficulties to the professor of higher education. The adage that, “ An authority is one who is more than 50 miles away from home” applies even more to the professor of higher education. For he is in the unique posture of relating to his own kind in providing expert service. True, there is a vast status spectrum within American higher education. But the unwritten rule of consulting is that the consultant must come from an institution of acknowledged superior status to the one being consulted, and that the two institutions must not in any way compete with each other. Thus it is all right for the professor to consult with a community college in his state, but often not acceptable that he work with an ambitious regional university—nee state college—in the same state. In general, unless the professor is on the faculty of a university of the...