Faculty Scholarship: an Investigation of Colleges of Education in the Us

Faculty productivity is often a key determinant in how well faculty members survive and progress in academia. In an era of accountability and assessment, coupled with a decline of federal and state dollars, particularly among public funded institutions, higher education is under pressure to justify and validate resource use. One way higher education demonstrates accountability, and thereby validates resource use, is through assessment of productivity levels by examining faculty productivity and scholarship. Journal publications in a two-year period (fall 2003-fall 2005) were used as the proxy for measuring productivity, with primary variables of interest being faculty tenure status, academic rank, gender, and race/ethnicity. The study yielded statistically non-significant results across all variables, but revealed important in-depth experiences of minority faculty in predominantly White Universities. The work is a must read for those who want to understand scholarly productivity in higher education in general, and colleges of education in particular.