IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v97y2015i4p715-724.html

Are Tenure Track Professors Better Teachers?

Author

Listed:
  • David N. Figlio

    (Northwestern University)

  • Morton O. Schapiro

    (Northwestern University)

  • Kevin B. Soter

Abstract

This study makes use of detailed student-level data from eight cohorts of first-year students at Northwestern University to investigate the relative effects of tenure track/tenured versus contingent faculty on student learning. We focus on classes taken during a student’s first term at Northwestern and employ an identification strategy in which we control for both student-level fixed effects and next-class-taken fixed effects to measure the degree to which contingent faculty contribute more or less to lasting student learning than do other faculty. We find consistent evidence that students learn relatively more from contingent faculty in their firstterm courses. This result is driven by the fact that the bottom quarter of tenure track/tenured faculty (as indicted by our measure of teaching effectiveness) has lower “value added” than their contingent counterparts. Differences between contingent and tenure track/tenured faculty are present across a wide variety of subject areas and are particularly pronounced for Northwestern’s averages and less-qualified students.

Suggested Citation

  • David N. Figlio & Morton O. Schapiro & Kevin B. Soter, 2015. "Are Tenure Track Professors Better Teachers?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(4), pages 715-724, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:97:y:2015:i:4:p:715-724
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00529
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marta De Philippis, 2021. "Multi-Task Agents and Incentives: The Case of Teaching and Research for University Professors," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(636), pages 1643-1681.
    2. Chris Birdsall & Seth Gershenson & Raymond Zuniga, 2020. "The Effects of Demographic Mismatch in an Elite Professional School Setting," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(3), pages 457-486, Summer.
    3. Jan Feld & Nicolás Salamanca & Ulf Zölitz, 2020. "Are Professors Worth It? The Value-Added and Costs of Tutorial Instructors," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 55(3), pages 836-863.
    4. Feld, Jan & Salamanca, Nicolás & Zölitz, Ulf, 2019. "Students are almost as effective as professors in university teaching," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    5. Jason Brennan & Phillip Magness, 2018. "Estimating the Cost of Justice for Adjuncts: A Case Study in University Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 155-168, March.
    6. Zhu, Maria, 2021. "Limited contracts, limited quality? effects of adjunct instructors on student outcomes☆," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    7. Rhys J. Williams, 2022. "The effect of casual teaching on student satisfaction: evidence from the UK," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 91-111, January.
    8. Zhang, Haifeng & Zhang, Junsen & Zhang, Yanfeng, 2019. "Do tournament incentives matter in academics? Evidence from personnel data in a top-tier university in China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 84-106.
    9. Rita A. Balaban & Donna B. Gilleskie & Uyen Tran, 2016. "A quantitative evaluation of the flipped classroom in a large lecture principles of economics course," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(4), pages 269-287, October.
    10. Cassandra M.D. Hart & Elizabeth Friedmann & Michael Hill, 2018. "Online Course-taking and Student Outcomes in California Community Colleges," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 13(1), pages 42-71, Winter.
    11. Alan Green & Danielle Sanderson, 2018. "The Roots of STEM Achievement: An Analysis of Persistence and Attainment in STEM Majors," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 63(1), pages 79-93, March.
    12. Keng, Shao-Hsun, 2020. "Gender bias and statistical discrimination against female instructors in student evaluations of teaching," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    13. Shao-Hsun Keng, 2018. "Tenure system and its impact on grading leniency, teaching effectiveness and student effort," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 1207-1227, November.
    14. Griffith, Amanda L. & Sovero, Veronica, 2021. "Under pressure: How faculty gender and contract uncertainty impact students’ grades," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    15. Shubo Liu & Qiuli Huang & Mengna Lv, 2024. "From vocation to profession: multiple identities of Chinese management academics," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-17, December.
    16. Catherine D. Rawn & Joanne A. Fox, 2018. "Understanding the Work and Perceptions of Teaching Focused Faculty in a Changing Academic Landscape," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 59(5), pages 591-622, August.
    17. Jonathan A. Tillinghast & Dr. James W. Mjelde & Anna Yeritsyan, 2023. "COVID-19 and Grade Inflation: Analysis of Undergraduate GPAs During the Pandemic," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, November.
    18. Karthik Muralidharan & Venkatesh Sundararaman, 2013. "Contract Teachers: Experimental Evidence from India," NBER Working Papers 19440, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Hilmer, Christiana E. & Hilmer, Michael J., 2020. "On the labor market for full-time non-tenure-track lecturers in economics," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    20. Tian, Zhilei & Wei, Yi & Li, Fang, 2019. "Who are better teachers? The effects of tenure-track and part-time faculty on student achievement," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 140-151.
    21. Feld, Jan & Salamanca, Nicolás & Zölitz, Ulf, 2019. "Students are almost as effective as professors in university teaching," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    22. Tommaso Agasisti & Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz, 2016. "Exploring efficiency differentials between Italian and Polish universities, 2001–11," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 43(1), pages 128-142.
    23. Di Xu & Florence Xiaotao Ran, 2021. "The Impacts Of Different Types Of College Instructors On Students’ Academic And Labor Market Outcomes," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 225-257, January.
    24. Artés, Joaquín & Pedraja-Chaparro, Francisco & Salinas-JiméneZ, Mª del Mar, 2017. "Research performance and teaching quality in the Spanish higher education system: Evidence from a medium-sized university," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 19-29.
    25. Ozan Jaquette & Bradley R. Curs, 2023. "Enrollment Growth and Faculty Hiring at Public Research Universities," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 64(3), pages 349-378, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Are Tenure Track Professors Better Teachers? (REStat 2015) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:97:y:2015:i:4:p:715-724. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The MIT Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.