Reassessing Faculty Assessment

Most professors’ workloads don’t look like they did even 10 years ago, but institutions still largely evaluate faculty members by the age-old teaching-scholarship-service model. So what would happen if faculty members were assessed for the work they actually did, rather than by a system that wrongly assumes all faculty work is created equal? And is there a way to make the whole evaluation process more meaningful? These questions were the focus of a session here Friday at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.