CTCH 602 - Confessions of a Closet Teacher

Lynn Barnsback
CTCH 602 Spring 2009
Marketing Education Review – Volume 18 Number 2, Summer 2008
Confessions of a Closet Teacher
Doug Hoffman & Mike Palmquist

The title captured my attention. The article starts with a 12 step program style dialogue about teaching. It is cute and entertaining, a good beginning, but unfortunately not really for this article. The article segues from here into its proposed main question “… is there a relationship between increased research productivity and funding or would some business schools be better off funding quality education and student development to attract donors?”

The authors briefly discuss the race for rankings that some schools face, and that the research that produces grants is considred necessary. They argue that there are 500 plus schools not in the top 25 rankings and that the push to research might not be best there; “the shift towards emphasizing research is not cost free”. Some of these include library budgets, hardware/software, large class size, more research associates, increased use of adjuncts to allow faculty time to research. (This appears to be the link to the 12 step, Closet Teacher monologue.) They ask another question “Will there be a payoff that exceeds these costs”.

Next, there is a review of the reasons donor’s give, first showing a difference in endowments. Harvard has 11 billion over Yale, and 34 schools over the 1 billion mark. Some schools have as little as half a million. The point appears to be “the rich get richer” and that research may not drive that much with such great disparities. Reasons for endowments vary. One variable is the type of school it is; giving a large endowment to a small or public school can have a much greater impact on the institution and allow the public more access to the information and donations, grants especially, look at this. Donors also can get business schools named after them, or not (a group of alumni at University of Wisconsin Madison donated money so it would not be “branded” or named.) Reasons given by most were: attract better faculty, increase student scholarships, begin new programs, and “because it is an excellent education”.

The authors summarize that schools may not be giving donors what they want. “Taking the faculty out of the classroom and replacing them with adjuncts so the faculty can write” may not be what brings in the endowment money. That appears clear to me based on the information above however the authors “have a feeling that” the increased research that is required may not be providing the benefit the institutions suspect and may be costing schools much more instead. The arguments for their opinion should have been stronger here.

The article was very short, and although the closing argument was OK, they could have done a more in depth and through job of researching and reporting on this topic. It felt scattered, and could have been two or three different articles; What motivates Donors to Donate? What is the correlation between endowments and faculty research? And the article I really wanted to read, teaching for the love of it and avoiding or working the research trap. I would have to say, with the exception of some interesting tidbits about endowments, I learned very little.