European Research Studies

Volume IX, Issue (3-4), 2006

Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replay

By
Dr. Maria Darra*

Abstract

Productivity is a measure of how well resources are utilized to produce output. It is

defined as a ratio of outputs to inputs. Then to manage productivity is to achieve more
outputs for the same inputs, usually measured in money terms or the same outputs for
less input. The modern notion of productivity includes both organizational efficiency
and effectiveness. In education outputs are principally represented by teaching,
outcomes by learning. The definition of productivity should not be confused with
efficiency and effectiveness. Effectiveness is a measure of the outcome of an
operational unit like a school or a university department. It is a measure of how well
an operational unit was able to accomplish its objective. Efficiency is a measure of
the degree to which an operational unit utilizes appropriate resources in the right
manner.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze and critique the assumptions and
developments of productivity measures, present productivity models with the main
factors that affect behavioural and cognitive learning and to focus on the
developments of productivity improvements in elementary, secondary and higher
education.

Keywords: Productivity in education, efficiency, effectiveness, models of

productivity

JEL classification: I20, I21, I23.

*Dr Maria Darra, Ph.D University of Piraeus, Department of Business Administration, E-mail:
[email protected]
102 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

1. Introduction

Education is an area of public service that is encountering increasing scrutiny

and criticism for its low quality and productivity. Educators are being called on to
function in an effective and efficient manner. In addition they are expected to adapt
policies and methods that will permit even greater productivity.
The subject of “productivity” often evokes emotional, polarized reactions from
labor, management, unions, stockholders and customers. Yet much more is said about
productivity than is known on the basis of sound research and theory. Frequently,
scholars and practitioners alike refer to “productivity” and “quality” as if they were
two separate performance measures. Yet a significant part of any productivity
equation is quality. There is no economic value in increased output levels if the
increase is offset by lower quality. According to OECD (1989), “The pursuit of
quality in education cannot be treated as a short-term, one-off exercise. It is a
permanent priority. Education is not an assembly-line process of mechanically
increasing inputs and raising productivity. How to improve its quality raises
fundamental questions about societal aims, the nature of participation in decision
making at all levels and the very purpose of the school as an institution.”
Improvements in the educational attainment of the workforce have been a
consistently important source of gain in labour productivity and the research and
development activities of institutions of higher education have been major sources of
innovation. Yet, the education industry’s own performance appears poor. Costs have
been rising steadily above the rate of wage increases, while labour productivity—in
terms of students per teacher—has declined. A surprisingly limited amount of work
has been devoted to measuring the output and productivity of the education industry,
particularly within the growth accounting framework that applies to other industries.
Part of the difficulty is that many educational institutions are in the
government sector and thus lack the competitive pricing that leads to a
straightforward measure of output and productivity. In addition, education is an area
where progress in measurement has been stymied by long-running debates over
perceived changes in the quality of output.

2. Measuring Productivity in Education

Productivity measurement is difficult in most service industries and education

is certainly no exception. Some observers seem to assume that quality “must” be
higher when the student-faculty ratio is lower. Although one-on-one teaching has its
place, some educators argue that a class of 25 is often better than a class of 5 because
of student interaction. In any event, when we study productivity it is important to
measure output directly and not make assumptions about what the case must be.
Before any measurement of productivity administrators need to decide what
level or levels of the organization’s productivity should be measured. For example, is
the productivity of an individual, say a professor or an administrative assistant, or is
the productivity of an academic department or a university as a whole? An important
is that measures should not be constructed prior to setting goals and objectives. Doing
so will lead administrators to value something that is measurable rather than
measuring something with value.
Measuring productivity in education requires a measure of both efficiency and
effectiveness. Efficiency is often measured using ratios, such as physical output
relative to an input or money cost of an input relative to an output. The exact
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 103

efficiency measure used depends upon the objective set by the administration.
Efficiency ratios such as enrolment per section or contact hours per faculty member
are reasonable and useful. An objective of improving students’ progress toward a
degree would require measures such as a withdrawal rate and average course load
taken. Examples of cost-efficiency measures include instructional costs per student,
library expenditures per student, and administrative costs per student.
Measuring effectiveness can be difficult, though not impossible. Several
ideas have been suggested in the literature. One way to measure effectiveness is to
assess community or client conditions and benchmark them to community standards
or those standards of other institutions of higher learning. An example could be the
number of graduates who find a job within three months of graduation. Another
option is to measure accomplishments, such as the number of graduates or the
percentage of students taking a class that requires relatively advanced work, such as
technical research paper. The number of graduates going on to receive advanced
degrees is an alternative measure. Finally, client satisfaction is a third avenue to
measure effectiveness. Clients can include alumni or businesses that frequently hire a
university’s graduates.

3. Productivity Improvement

Achieving excellent and acceptable levels of productivity requires careful

attention to the following:

Adequate work climate and teamwork

Productivity improvements at the source are possible if the work environment

is conducive to innovation and individual creativity. Total teamwork between
management and employees, unions and other functional areas of the organization is
also essential. An environment where school teachers and managers are able to
participate in problem solving, decision making, process changes and planning
improved performance provides fertile ground for improvement in productivity.

b. The right training

Training is essential because it prepares everyone to do his job well, by

building the right knowledge for logical and intelligent actions and decisions. Well
trained people attain efficient work habits and positive attitudes that promote co-
operation and teamwork.

c. A balanced emphasis on people and service management

Often the pressure to provide more services can lead to neglect of employee
development, degradation in the morals of employees and breakdown in
communication within the organization. Productivity improvement requires focus on
people and product requirements. The manager’s role in the improvement process is
to provide the right level of encouragement, training, guidance, support and help as
required. Employees also have very important roles to play in ensuring that there is a
mutual trust and confidence required to deliver the final output successfully.

d. Creation of awareness among management and employees

104 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

Everyone within an organization has both internal and external customers. The
notion that educational service quality is only important to the final customer outside
the organization should be discouraged. Increasing productivity at the individual level
ensures that excellent services are delivered to the ultimate customer.

e. Adequate focus on providing the fundamentals at productivity excellence

The fundamentals of productivity excellence are the corner stones of process

and program enhancement that lead to productivity improvement. Some of these
fundamentals are:
Management and employee commitment
Process innovation
Adequate reward system
Systems innovation
Goal setting
Error cause removal

f. Adequate measure and data

Everyone within the organization is trained on how to use the various

measures for planning, improvement and control. For measures to be meaningful and
useful there is the need to collect accurate data.

g. Focus on managing the total system requirements

Productivity improvement at the source cannot be achieved through piecemeal

ideas, actions and controls. Very good productivity results are obtainable through
focusing on managing the total requirements of each operational unit as well as the
total organization. Managing the total requirements involves the use of managerial
skills to provide the right direction, supervising at the right level, defining
responsibilities adequately, providing positive reinforcement, motivation, recognition
and encouragement.

4. General Approaches and Principles

4.1. General Approaches for Productivity Improvement

Each organization or educational unit has its own unique productivity

problems. The choice of which approach is likely to be successful depends on the type
of problem to be solved and the prevailing circumstances with the educational unit
under analysis. The following approaches are recommended:

a. Work simplification and operation improvement

Work simplification is the systematic investigation and analysis of present

work systems for the purpose of developing easier, quicker and more economical
ways of providing high quality services.

b. Goal clarification
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 105

This approach focuses on identifying specific goals and objectives that will
improve productivity, implementing these objectives and providing on- going
assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of an organization.

c. Incentive systems

This approach focuses on methods and techniques for motivating individuals

and work groups. The three most commonly used motivational approaches are the
traditional economic incentive approach, the human relationship approach and the
self-drive approach.

d. Helping the working employee

This approach focuses on identifying specific people oriented problems that

affect employee performance.

e. Improving the task at the operational unit level

This approach focuses on thorough analysis of each task and elements at the
operational unit level. The purpose of the task analysis is to eliminate barriers and
bottlenecks that affect productivity.

f. Improving technology at the operational unit level

This approach focuses on selecting appropriate technologies that improve

productivity.

4.2. General Principles for Productivity Improvement

The comprehensive use of the 6C principles of Control, Coordination, Co-

operation, Contribution of analysis, Communication and Cost avoidance, assist
productivity improvement analysts to be successful in managing productivity
improvement attempts. More specifically:

a. Controls

It is important for the successful implementation of the project to define the

objectives and understand the activities involved. Performance measures such as
productivity ratios, cost curves and control charts should be used in measuring the
results of implementing the objectives.

b. Coordination

Coordination of all activities can be achieved by designating a project manager

to be in charge of these activities. He ensures that all project resources are controlled
and allocated properly and that the project is going according to schedule. The
successful project manager is one who has good interpersonal skills, good judgment
and good organizational abilities.
106 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

c. Cooperation

The cooperation between members of productivity project team is a key

requirement for success. Where the physical presence of all the team work members is
impossible, communication channels should be put in place to promote cooperation.

d. Contribution of analysis

The contribution analysis of each phase of the improvement project can be

performed by using the variable and result mapping technique which requires that for
each activity performed the expected result must be matched against the true output or
result. This provides a way of identifying deviations from project goals and
objectives, as well as of understanding the causes of deviation from specifications.

e. Communication

Meetings for discussing open issues. On going communication among project

team members is required to avoid things falling through the cracks.

f. Cost avoidance

It is required in order to avoid cost overrun in productivity improvement project

implementation. Additional functions without value added should be avoided.

5. Models of Productivity Measurement and Improvement

5.1. General descriptive models of productivity improvement.

The primary purpose of a productivity model is to provide a conceptual

blueprint of the complex interrelationships and interactions of the many factors that
influence the quantity and quality of service output. The following four general
descriptive models serve this purpose:

a. An organizational productivity disaggregating model

This model subdivides inputs, conversion technology and outputs into useful
subclasses. The rational for selecting inputs and outputs as variables to be subdivided
into classes, is that these are the basic components of a productivity index.
Organizational productivity is used to measure a family of productivity measures. It is
likely that organizational productivity measures will result in different families of
measures depending upon the level within the organization that is being measured.
Sociotechnical systems have been proposed as a method of viewing
organizations (Davis and Taylor, 1972). There are a multitude of psychological –
sociological instruments to measure behavior and individual beliefs concerning the
social aspects of productivity (Adam et. all. 1981)

b. Sutermeister’s model of worker productivity

Sutermeister (1976) presents a comprehensive descriptive model which is a

series of concentric circles surrounding productivity with factors closer to the centre
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 107

being more direct in their influence on productivity. The model divides all factors into
two groups. The first is the technological development and the second the employee’s
motivation. Motivation is a function of ability and employees’ job performance.
Ability is composed of skill and knowledge whereas job performance is influenced by
individuals’ needs and the physical and social conditions at the workplace.
Sutermeister’s model provides an excellent overview of the many factors involved in
productivity improvement.

c. A conceptual schematic model of factors affecting productivity

This model incorporates the major factors, both organizational and extra
organizational that have a direct casual effect on the productivity of the individual
employee. Major factors in this model of productivity are represented by rectangles.
Circles are used to denote factors that act as filters or butters within the influential
relationship between two major factors. Productivity in this model is a function of
three primary factors. First the capacity at the task, second the individual effort
brought by the worker to the task and third the interference that cannot be controlled
by any individual. These three factors are combined through some form of work
measurements to yield productivity data for the individual in some specified time
period.

d. An input – output model of the organization productivity

The purpose of this elementary model is to emphasize that productivity is a

function of all of the various inputs to the production function. This model focuses in
productivity and enlarges it relative to the other factors in this system. In this model
six sources of inputs are identified and combined within the total productivity. An
attempt is made to indicate how these inputs are converted into goods or services.
Output is a function of all these factors and productivity is a function of both the level
of the inputs and the way in which they are combined.

5.2. Walberg’s Model of Educational Productivity

According to Walberg (1981, 1983, 1986), nine factors are required to be

optimized in order to increase affective, behavioural, and cognitive learning. These
nine factors are consistent, and widely generalizable. The proposed theory of
educational productivity has the following groups of factors:

a. Student aptitude variables

1. Ability or prior achievement, as measured by the usual standardized tests;

2. Development, as indexed by chronological age or stage of maturation;
3. Motivation, or self-concept, as indicated by personality tests or the student’s
willingness to persevere intensively on learning tasks.

b. Instructional variables

4. Quantity of instruction (amount of time students engage in learning);

5. Quality of instruction, including psychological and curricular aspects
108 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

c. Educationally stimulating psychological environment

6. Home environment;
7. Classroom or school environment;
8. Peer group environment outside the school;
9. Mass media environment, especially amount of leisure-time television viewing.

The first five aspects of student aptitude and instruction are prominent in the
educational models of Benjamin Bloom, Jerome Bruner, John Carroll, Robert Glaser,
and others (see Walberg, 1986, and Chapter 4 for a comparative analysis). Each
aspect appears necessary for learning in school because the student can learn very
little. Large amounts of instruction and high degrees of ability, for example, could
count for little if students are unmotivated or if instruction is unsuitable. Each of the
first five factors appears necessary but insufficient for effective learning. High-quality
instruction can be understood as providing information cues, correctives, and positive
reinforcement or encouragement that insures the fruitfulness of engaged time. Careful
diagnosis and tutoring can help make instruction suitable for students. Inspired
teaching can help students to persevere. Quality of instruction, then, may be
considered an efficient enhancement of study time.
The four remaining factors in Walberg’s model are environmental variables.
Three of these environmental factors as the psychological climate of the classroom
group enduring affection and academic stimulation from adults at home and an out-of-
school peer group with its learning interests, goals, and activities influence learning in
two ways. Students learn from peers directly. These factors indirectly benefit learning
by raising student ability, motivation, and responsiveness to instruction.
Classroom morale is measured by obtaining student ratings of their
perceptions of the classroom group. Good morale means that the class members like
one another, they have a clear idea of the classroom goals, and the lessons are
matched to their abilities and interests. In general, morale is the degree to which
students are concentrating on learning rather diverting their energies because of
unconstructive social climates. Peer groups outside school and stimulating home
environments can help by expanding learning time and enhancing its efficiency.
Students can both learn in these environments becoming able to learn in formal
schooling.
The last factor, mass media, particularly television, can displace homework,
leisure reading, and other academically stimulating activities. It may dull the student’s
keenness for academic work.
In addition to encouraging and supervising homework and reducing television
viewing, parents can improve academic conditions at home. What might be called
“the alterable curriculum at home” is much more predictive of academic learning than
is family (Walberg, 1984). This curriculum includes informed parent–child
conversations about school and everyday events; encouragement and discussion of
leisure reading; monitoring, discussion, and guidance of television viewing and peer
activities; deferral of immediate gratification to accomplish long-term goals;
expressions of affection and interest in the child’s academic and other progress as a
person.
Cooperative efforts by parents and educators to modify alterable
academically stimulating conditions at home had beneficial effects on learning
(Walberg, 1984).
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 109

Sticht and James (1984) have pointed out that children first develop
vocabulary and comprehension skills by listening, particularly to their parents before
they begin school. As they gain experience with written language between the first
and seventh grades, their reading ability gradually rises to the level of their listening
ability. Highly skilled listeners in kindergarten make faster reading progress in the
later grades, which leads to a growing ability gap between initially skilled and
unskilled readers.
The educational productivity model of Walberg does not contain interaction
terms and, instead, it is assumed that the factors interact by substituting for one
another with diminishing returns. This can be contrasted with the way that researchers
typically conceive of interactions (e.g., aptitude-treatment interactions) in terms of
different types of students achieving differentially under alternative instructional
methods.
Other social factors not included in the productivity model influence learning
in school but are less directly linked to academic learning. For example, class size,
financial expenditures per student and private governance (independent or sectarian in
contrast to public control of schools) correlate only weakly with learning, especially if
the initial abilities of students are considered. Thus, improvements in the more direct
and more alterable factors contained in the model in Exhibit A hold the best hope for
increasing educational productivity (Walberg & Shanahan, 1983).

5.3. Carroll Model

Carroll (1963) argues that the basic component of a model of learning is time.
The degree of learning is a function of the engaged time divided by time needed.
Engaged time is equal to the smallest of three quantities. Opportunity or time allowed
for learning, perseverance or the amount of time a learner is willing to engage actively
in learning and aptitude or the amount of time needed to learn, increased or decreased
by whatever amount of time is necessary as the result of the quality of instruction and
the ability of the pupil to understand instructions. This last quantity (aptitude or time
needed) is also the denominator in Carroll’s equation:

Degree of school learning = f (time spent/time needed)

This emphasis on time or quantity of schooling has been incorporated in many

subsequently developed models. Cooley and Leinhardt (1975, 1978 and 1980) re-
labelled many parts of Carroll’s model and preferred to study the classroom rather
than the individual. This emphasis seems appropriate because most instruction takes
place in groups and not individually. The four constructs in Cooley and Leinhardt’s
model were motivators, opportunity, the quality of instructional events, and the
structure of instructional material.
Other models in which time is emphasized include those of Berliner (1979),
who emphasized the kinds of teacher behaviours and instructional practices that
increased academic learning time, and the mathematical models of Lau (1978) and
Hanuschek (1979) that related achievement and time components. These ‘time’
models concentrate primarily on the various factors that affect time spent on task.
Classroom environment and school effects are of peripheral importance as they
contribute only to individual time-on-task.

5.4. Bloom’s Model

110 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

Bloom (1976) switched emphasis from time-on-task to the learning history

of the student. As it is stated in page 7 of his work “What any person in the world can
learn, almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current
conditions of learning”. The key to successful learning lies less with time and more
with the extent to which students can be motivated and helped to correct their learning
difficulties at crucial points in the learning process. While not explicit in Bloom’s
model, feedback is an important attribute. Bloom placed considerable emphasis on the
cognitive characteristics that a pupil brings to the learning task. These characteristics,
he claimed, were the single most dominant factors in predicting learning outcomes.
A major feature of Bloom’s model is the provision of guidelines about the
relative importance of the various facets of the model and the overall explanatory
power of the model. Bloom estimated that cognitive entry behaviours correlated
positive with a coefficient of about 0, 75 with academic achievement. Affective entry
behaviours and quality of instruction correlated positive with a coefficient of about
0.50 with achievement. Together the three facets correlated 0.95 with achievement.
Thus, Bloom’s model could account for more than 80 percent of the variation
in the level or rate of achievement (Bloom, 1976). Under ideal conditions, the
combination of all three facets could account for as much as 90 percent of the
variation.

5.5 Glaser’s Model

Neither Carroll nor Bloom and their successors pay much attention to learning
processes. Indeed, Glaser (1980) pointed out that aptitude, learning, and instruction
traditionally have been kept at a distance from each other. To minimize this distance,
Glaser envisaged various macro- and micro-theories of teaching and instruction.
Macro-theory concerns the large practical variables dealt with in schools. As it is
stated in page 324 of his work “…such as the allocation and efficient use of time, the
structure of the curriculum, the nature of feedback and reinforcement to the student,
the pattern of teacher student interaction, the relationship between what IS taught and
what is assessed, the degree of classroom flexibility required for adapting to learner
background and the details of curriculum materials. Such variables need to be part of
a theory of instruction (and), as this theory develops; it will be under girded by the
more macro-studies of human intelligences, problem solving, and learning”.
Glaser is representative of many recent psychologists/educators who have
outlined models of learning primarily related to learning processes (Case, 1978;
Greeno, 1980; Scandura, 1977; Sternberg, 1977). These models provide concentration
on the procedures for effective learning and emphasis on the importance of feedback
between learning processes and achievement outcomes. The models do not provide a
focus on the role of the teacher, school, or curriculum in terms other than how these
factors impede or aid the processes of learning. Glaser (1976, 1977, 1980 and 1982)
identified four essential components for producing student learning.
a. Analysis of competent performance which includes identification of the
information structures required for performance, as well as a description of the
cognitive strategies that apply to the learning task.
b. The description of the learner’s initial state which is similar to Bloom’s cognitive
entry behaviours.
c. The transformation process between the initial state and a state of competence; this
is the unique contribution of Glaser-type models.
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 111

d. The assessment of the effects of instructional implementation. This assessment can

be both short-term (immediately in the context of learning) or long-term (generalized
patterns of behaviours and the ability for future learning).

5.6 Fraser’s et al A Synthesis of Models

A number of critical elements of the above models have been incorporated by

Fraser et al. a. This rearrangement places the pupil in the centre of the various
influences. The three components in the box pupil, learning processes/methods of
instruction, and outcomes are closely entwined. b. There is an allowance for feedback
between appropriate components. While there can be reciprocal relations between
every element, some lines can be omitted. For example, instructors and social factors
of pupils seldom interact in their effects on school learning. c. It is the outcomes of
the learning processes that typically affect the instructor and the instruction. To some
exteme, this could be considered unfortunate in that it would be desirable that pupils’
learning processes have more direct feedback on the instructor and instruction. But,
for others, this could be fortunate in that modifications should be made relative to
achievement outcomes not improved processes. Perhaps some of the researches on
learning-to-learn can serve as a middle ground (e.g., Anzai & Simon, 1979; Greeno,
1980: Klahr & Wallace. 1976). d. The model not only has cognitive outcomes, but
also has affective outcomes. The disposition to learn is a critical goal of this model of
learning. Should a child acquire a favorable attitude to learning during the school
years, this probably will have more impact on subsequent life-time learning than
increased school achievement. Affective components include self-concept, self-
actualization, and reciprocity (Rawls, 1971). e. The role of learning processes and
learning styles are clearly specified. f. The outcomes apply to both general and
specific cognitive outcomes.

6. Productivity in Elementary and Secondary Education

In the USA unlike most sectors of its economy that steadily increase their
productivity over time, schools become less rather than more efficient, a serious
matter given the size of the education sector and the central and increasing importance
of learning in the American economy and society. School productivity or the relation
of achievement to costs was 65% higher in 1970–71 than in 1998–99 (Hoxby, 2001).

6.1 Factors that affect learning

One of the purposes of this section is to present some of the large-scale

surveys that reveal the factors that affect learning.
Though economic, sociological, and political factors affect learning, their influence is
indirect. Learning is fundamentally a psychological process; student motivation,
instruction, and other psychological factors are the well-established, consistent, and
proximal causes of learning. Thus, we start with psychological factors before
analyzing the social conditions that affect learning directly.
Herbert Simon, the Nobel economist and psychologist, combined these fields
to synthesize what might be called the economics of cognitive learning. His synthesis
sets the stage for understanding what helps students learn. If a lifetime were devoted
to acquisition of information, according to Simon’s estimates, about 200 million items
could be stored. “Hence, the problem for humans is to allocate their very limited
112 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

processing capacity among several functions of noticing, storing, and indexing on the
input side, and retrieving, reorganizing, and controlling his effectors [actions] on the
output side” (Simon, 1981, p. 167).
Language mastery, the fundamental and pervasive skill necessary for
achievement in school, is determined more by experience than by psychometric
intelligence. Decisive is the amount and intensity of the experience rather than age or
psychometric intelligence (Walberg, Hase, & Rasher, 1978).
To foster learning, that it can best provide logical, readily understood
explanations suitable to learners as well as the time, opportunity and incentives for
them to learn. These simple, commonsense principles set the stage for understanding
research on the psychological causes within and outside school that foster
achievement.
Practice makes perfect, says an old adage. An analysis of time effects on
learning suggests the obvious: 88% of 376 study estimates revealed the positive
effects of various aspects of study time such as preschool participation, school
attendance, amount of attention to lessons, amount of homework, and length of the
school year (Walberg, 1998b). The positive effect of time is perhaps most consistent
of all causes of learning.
This taxonomy of nine factors in three sets derives from an early synthesis
of 2,575 study comparisons (Walberg, 1984) suggesting that these factors are the
chief psychological causes of academic achievement. Subsequent syntheses have
shown results consistent with the original findings. Each of the first five factors—
prior achievement, development, motivation, and the quantity and quality of
instruction—seems necessary for learning in school. Without at least a small amount
of each factor, the student may learn little. Large amounts of instruction and high
degrees of ability for example, may count for little if students are unmotivated or
instruction is unsuitable. Each of the first five factors appears necessary but
insufficient by itself for effective learning.

6.2 Motivation

Motivation as a form of human resource development can be tailored into

greater productivity for teaching professionals with the development of a strong
organization and a positive working environment. With the United States economy
becoming ever more interdependent on the global economy motivation of
professionals and an understanding of employee behavior in educational facilities has
taken an even greater importance. Schools in the public and private sector should
continue to view staff members as an asset. Personnel will be able to achieve high
levels of productivity and a positive working environment.
Teacher motivation and its effect on the educational process have been
examined and analyzed in detail from the early educational reform movements in
New England to present day educational theorists. Motivation and productivity can be
enhanced through the situational/environmental approach. Traditional administrative
practices may prove to be obsolete or no longer useful.

a. Tailoring Motivation into Productivity

Employee satisfaction and productivity are goals that administrators should

stress in order to accomplish the objectives of an educational facility, whether those
decisions are made through a traditional or non-traditional approach. However,
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 113

principals should accept the diversity of human attitudes, feelings and motives and
professionalism while working with each teacher to personalize his/her needs.
Moreover, as commercial concerns broadened, Lawrence (1975) believed that
individual interests should be adapted to increase motivation, morale, and
productivity, thereby reducing employee turnover and alienation within the
organization.
While motivation varies between individuals, the administrator in the current
educational climate must understand the beliefs, desires, and values of his or her
employees and how these attributes will affect job performance. The ability to
understand motivated behavior of employees is only the initial stage. Limited
unmotivated behavior is the desired outcome for administrators and managers alike.
Much motivated research has concluded that a strong organization and
positive work environment will encourage, and even promote greater motivation and
productivity. Administrators who offer professional employees the possibility of
doing new and original tasks in an effort to motivate them to set high standards of
performance often exceed organizational standards.
Motivation itself is closely associated with how much students can learn.
Multivariate analysis of surveys and control-group studies of reinforcement
corroborate its causal influence. This effect sharply contradicts the prevalent idea in
education that learning must be intrinsically motivated for its own sake.

b. Home Environment

The effect of the home environment can be taken very seriously for several reasons.
Control-group studies corroborate many correlational findings. The home effect is far
larger than apparent socioeconomic effects. Something can be done about home
environments. School–parent programs can help parents academically stimulate their
children by reading to them, taking them to libraries, guiding and discussing leisure
television viewing, cooperating with home visitors and teachers and similar practices.

c. Grouping

Grouping students reflects common sense. If students with similar levels of

knowledge and skills are grouped together, teachers can avoid teaching them what
they already know and what they are yet incapable of learning; with instruction more
suited to them, students should find learning more efficient and pleasant.

d. Student Incentives

Similarly student incentives particularly high standards, promote learning.

The threat of grade retention, for example, can serve as an incentive for greater effort,
although intensive remediation seems necessary.
This section will focus on the developments of productivity improvement
appropriate to that segment of education called schooling, specifically in public
elementary and secondary schooling.
If the only purpose of schools were the dispensation of knowledge or the
provision of training and skills the selection of a productivity indicator would be
straight forward. The numbers of children enrolled in school or the numbers of hours
of teaching provided are a set of output measures. The fact that the above mentioned,
less noted services are provided by schools make the choice of indicators more
114 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

complex. The difficulty with output indicators is the selection of which indicator is
the best measure of a schools performance. Schools priorities are shaped through a
political process and the multifaceted school programs reflect the outcome at such a
process. Schools exist for all the above purposes with others that have not been listed.
The roots of school improvement can be seen historically as having two-distinct
threads of research: the first, spanning many years, is concerned with educational
innovation; while the second is more recent and involves the study of effective
schools.
Loucks- Horsley and Hergert (1985) in a very useful Action Guide to school
Improvement state some of their beliefs which appear to contradict the conventional
wisdom about improving schools.
Considerable work has been undertaken on the study of educational innovation, and
this is admirably summarised by Michael Fullam in his book, “The meaning of
Educational Change (1982)”.

6.3 Effective Schools

In recent years a lot of research has developed on effective schools and

excellent reviews of the literature are provided by Purkey and Smith (1983) and
Rutter (1983). Schools, in which students achieve good academic results, after
controlling for home background factors and ability measures, are called “effective”.
While a number of methodological problems exist, including the narrow definition of
outcome measures largely in terms of academic achievement the different studies
have produced fairly consistent findings and have identified a set of factors which
seem to be related to pupils’ performance.
Most of these approaches have seen schooling as something that is done for
the students, rather than thinking about education as something that students
essentially do for themselves. An argument is developed that makes students the key
factor in shaping school’s outcomes and therefore a central issue of our thinking about
productivity.
Of course such an argument is a simplification and not uncontroversial. One
could take issue with every statement within it. For example, there are all sorts of
reasons beyond spending levels as to why students and schools perform the way they
do. In many countries public support for education remains high, and there is not the
same sense of crisis that envelops education policy in the United States. Some critics
see the attack on schooling as a neo-conservative effort to move away from
commitments to equity and the public sector (Boyd, 1991). But those who criticize the
neo-conservative agenda in education they have also concerns about the quality and
appropriateness of schooling. Regardless of the political solution advocated, it seems
that systems of mass schooling are not as effective as they should or could be. One
way of thinking about this problem is to see it as a problem of productivity.
The leading writer on production functions in elementary education is David
Monk of Syracuse University. In his book, Educational Finance: An Economic
Approach (1990), and in an article in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
(1992), Monk outlines an informed and sophisticated view of the history of
educational productivity studies and of the status of thinking in the area. His work is
the most complete published analysis of the literature on educational production
functions and stands as the definitive synthesis of present knowledge. Monk's basic
view is that production studies of schooling have not yielded very much useful
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 115

knowledge yet and therefore they face serious obstacles to doing so, but that it is too
soon to give up on the attempt.
Monk uses the production function as the basic element for studying
productivity in schools. He defines a production function as a model which links
conceptually and mathematically outcomes, inputs, and the processes that transform
the latter into the former in schools. He notes that production functions are important
for improving both technical and allocate efficiencies. However, despite their
potential benefits, Monk recognizes the major obstacles that face the creation of
production functions for education. Outcomes, inputs and processes are not easily
understood.
Monk is aware of the difficulties in dealing with both micro and macro
analyses. He concludes that there is no any other better approach. As he points out in
page 327: "... it is not always the case that micro-level data are better than macro-level
data. The proper level of analysis depends largely on the nature of the phenomenon
being studied. Some phenomena are district rather than school or classroom
phenomena and have effects that are felt throughout entire school districts".
The inputs of the school itself are relatively easy to recognize--buildings, teachers,
textbooks, and the like-- although Monk notes difficulties here, too, in knowing which
inputs do reach students, and in what form.
What does it mean to say that a resource flows to a student? A teacher might
spend time providing tutorial instruction for a single student. But the student may or
may not be attentive to the instruction being provided. The student may "... decline the
assistance, either overtly or covertly. In such a case, did the resource flow, as he
points out in page 328.
Time is another significant problem for studying educational productivity. It
seems reasonable to believe that students will learn at different rates. Yet this
seemingly innocuous conclusion creates enormous difficulties for analysis, since it
means that different resources at different times and in different arrangements may be
necessary for different students. Indeed, there could be a unique production function
for each child or even several functions for each child under different circumstances
as it is stated in page 344 in Monk’s book.
Analysts also agree that learning is influenced significantly by factors outside
the school. A vast array of home and background variables, Monk indicates, have
been used at various times as part of the specification of the inputs of schooling, not
always accompanied by a strong theoretical rationale for their importance. Even when
identified, these input variables are difficult to measure. Monk cites intelligence as a
particularly important and difficult to resolve instance.
Finally, as if these problems were not enough, Monk mentions various
technical problems for studying productivity in education. These include the limited
variation among schools in many of their attributes, the possibility that both input and
outcome variables are collinear, and the likelihood that inputs and outcomes influence
each other. Finally, there is the real possibility that certain aspects of education are
"anarchistic," by which Monk means that actors are not goal-oriented, so that even if
the best way of doing things was known, people would not pay attention to it as it
stated in page 339.
Monk raises the possibility that there is no production function for education.
In page 342 of his book, he states that no "systematic process governs the
transformation of inputs into outcomes" (p. 342). Many of the same themes are
reprised in Monk's (1992) article. He begins by pointing out the current policy
towards what he calls "outcomes as standards". He notes that there is a paradox
116 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

between pessimistic assessments of productivity research in education and the

growing drive towards improving productivity which requires "a nontrivial store of
knowledge regarding the ability of state, district, and school officials to enhance
productivity" as it is stated in page 307. Monk's view is that
"...the underlying model of education productivity is inadequate and has not evolved
much.... The weakness of the conceptualization gives rise to much of the policy-
making frustration" (p. 308), "...(a) it is premature to conclude that the production
function lacks meaning within education contexts; (b) ...approaches to the outcomes-
as-standards policy-making response have merit and involve increased efforts to
monitor and make sense of the experimentation that occurs; and (c) the embrace of the
outcomes-as-standards response ought not to crowd out alternative, more deductively
driven strategies." (p. 320).
Monk goes on to advocate the study of productivity through looking at the
properties of classrooms. This proposal is based partly on the belief that teachers will
use different instructional approaches with different classes of students. He discusses
the ways in which these responses by teachers might occur depending on the students,
and suggests that teachers may have individual patterns of adjustment that could be
studied and defined in terms of their impact.
Monk's work provides a good review of what has been done in the area of
productivity research in education and useful lenses for viewing the value of the work
and possible directions for its development. He draws our attention particularly to
weaknesses in the way in which the idea of educational process has been conceived.
The study of productivity in education has been greatly hampered by underestimating
the central role played by students in generating educational outcomes. A better
understanding of productivity in education requires much more attention to what
students think and what they do.
Students do not stand in relation to schools either as raw materials to be
processed or as workers doing the processing. Education is a unique kind of
production because it requires learners to create knowledge and meaning in the
context of their own lives. The key aspect of social situations such as schooling, as
has often been pointed out by theorists, is that humans are intentional; they can alter
their actions according to their developing understanding of a given situation. This
understanding is best captured in the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz
(1967, 1970), who wrote extensively about human intention and action and their
development through a person's life experiences. Schutz's work, and that of others in
the same vein (e.g., Natanson, 1970; Greene, 1988), illustrates the ways in which
people make sense of their world, and how these relevancies shift constantly as their
ideas and situations change.
The idea of a production function for education depends, of course, on seeing
education as being a production process, which means that inputs are transformed into
outputs in a standard way. The essential exemplar of a production relationship is the
factory, in which raw materials are turned into finished products through various
production processes. One can easily recognize the powerful role that the metaphor of
the factory plays in much of the current policy conversation around schooling.
Many of the problems of production studies hinge on the role of students
whether they are producers or materials. As soon as students are viewed as individuals
with unique capacities and interests the problems of specifying a production
relationship in schools become enormous, as Monk points out. Imagine a factory in
which the raw materials had minds, and could make autonomous decisions about
whether they would be part of whatever was being produced. Just as one was about to
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 117

weld a piece of metal to be the roof of a car the part that one had in hand would
announce its unwillingness to play the assigned role and its desire instead to be part of
an art gallery instead of being part of a car, or to become a piece of cloth instead of a
piece of metal.
The idea of the student as worker seems more promising than that of the
student as material to be worked on, since it acknowledges that learning is something
that students do. In economic processes workers are doing something to some material
or for someone else. Although students often do think of schooling in this sense, as
doing something for their teachers or their parents, the concept of education is
centrally concerned about what happens to learners, not what happens to others
around them. If students are the workers, then they are working on themselves rather
than on external materials.
Every teacher knows it. Every teacher realizes that what happens in a class is
fundamentally dependent on who the students are, how they make sense of the world
and what they want or do not want to do. Students are constantly making decisions
about the amount of effort, attention and interest they will put into their school work.
They decide to come to school or not, to pay attention in class or not, to take the
material seriously or not, to focus on grades or not (Doyle, 1986). These decisions are
not entirely independent of what schools and teachers do. Neither are they determined
by what happens in schools. We may arrange schooling on the basis of relatively
standard treatment of all while every educator recognizes that the best laid plans may
come to nothing in the face of students with different agendas.
If what students do and think is central to education, then it must also be
central to the way schooling is organized. Yet that is far from being the case. Most of
the policy attention about schools focuses on such matters as curriculum, teachers,
school organization, or governance. Policies in these areas are presumed, almost
unthinkingly to yield changes in what students do, think, or learn.
Consider various sides of the debate over restructuring schooling. One
approach has been what Fullan (1991) calls the "intensification" approach -- stricter
curriculum requirements, closer supervision of teachers and students, external
examinations, and so on. Here the assumption is that teachers and administrators will
be tougher on students, and that students will respond to the changes by intensifying
their own efforts at school. The strategy could be phrased as one of "making them
learn whether they want to or not". Presumably we would already have taken steps to
make sure all students learned what we wanted them to. As soon as we see students as
both workers and product, clearly a strategy of intensification will not be successful,
since it does not take into account the power and the range of students' ideas and the
motivations.
The main alternative policy currently being proposed is the
"professionalization" approach in which more authority is given to teachers to take the
steps they see as most desirable. In some versions authority is moved to school
communities which include teachers, parents, and sometimes students (Zeichner,
1992). But if we think of students as the central element, then this strategy seems
unlikely to succeed. It assumes that teachers know what to do to create more learning,
and that they will do so by giving them the authority. Neither assumption seems
credible. It is reasonable to think that most teachers have a real concern about students
and their welfare. It is not reasonable to think that all teachers have a tremendous
store of knowledge about how to educate that they are waiting to unleash with
dramatic effect as soon as they are freed from the shackles of bureaucratic restrictions.
118 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

Perhaps, we would need to pay much more attention to the issue of

motivation. If students are the producers of their own learning, then their motivation is
absolutely critical. There is a substantial literature on motivation, both in education
and in psychology (Ames & Ames, 1984, 1989; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Hastings &
Schwieso, 1987). Various strategies for the organization of schooling and teaching
have been advanced based on this research. Nolen and Nicholls (2007), in reviewing
the literature, come to the conclusion that the most effective strategies have to do with
treating students as capable persons, capitalizing on their knowledge and interests, and
involving students in determining goals and methods of learning. Berliner (1989)
suggested that classrooms where different kinds of tasks are occurring simultaneously
provide more ways for students to demonstrate ability and feel competent. DeCharms
(1984), suggested that teachers need to provide students with choices and encourage
"responsible pupil-influence attempts and independent activity", with students
learning gradually to make more and larger choices.

6.4 Factors inhibiting Improvement in Productivity

Although the basic options for change are evident, there is increasing
evidence that schools are remarkably resistant to change. One explanation for this
resistance is the absence of adequate incentives. Pincus in his work (19…) “Incentives
for Education in the Public Schools”, offers six contrasts between schools and
organization functioning in a competitive sphere. He notes that schools should be
expected to:
a. Be more likely than the competitive firm to adopt cost-raising innovations since
there is no marketplace to test the value of the innovation (e.g. smaller class size) in
relation to its cost.
b. Be less likely than the competitive firm to adopt cost-reducing innovations unless
the funds so saved become available for other purposes within the district.
c. Be less likely than the competitive firm to adopt innovations that significantly
change the resource mix (e.g. a higher ratio of teacher aides to teachers, sharply
increased use of capital-intensive technologies) because any consequent productivity
increases are not necessarily matched by greater profits to the district and because
replacement of labor by capital may threaten the guild structure of the schools.
d. Be more likely than the competitive firm to adopt new instructional processes or
new wrinkles in administrative management that do not significantly change
institutional structure.
e. Be less likely than the competitive firm to adopt innovations that change
accustomed authority roles and established ways of doing business because changes in
these relations represent the heaviest kind of real cost bureaucracies.
f. Be equally unwilling as competitive firms to face large-scale encroachments on
protected markets (voucher systems, metropolitan are wide open enrollment),
although for somewhat different reasons.

7. Productivity in Higher Education

Productivity in higher education is somewhat different from that in

elementary and secondary education. Higher education and more specifically
university, poses a number of characteristics that result in an organizational culture
that makes pursuing productivity in a systematic way difficult.
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 119

Universities are stuffed by professionals with a tradition of autonomy. Unlike

most other employees, professors maintain control over their own time. Control is
further complicated by the fragmentation of university into academic departments.
This decentralised structure creates problems at coordination and compliance.
In this setting any attempt to improve productivity outputs and outcomes needs to be
realistic. The suggestions contain here focus on a practical institutional approach.
Although universities are understood to have three brand missions – teaching,
research and public service – the focus in this part is teaching, especially
undergraduate teaching. Universities are a classic example of a multiple output firm
with additional outputs, including research, housing and entertainment (sports) to
education. All of these activities are reflected in the measure of expenditures, but not
measure in the price.
The university, it is increasingly argued, is the logical setting for developing
and helping to implement the scientific and technological innovations demanded by a
modern, complex and rational social system. As Schaffer (19…) argues, the rise of the
technocratic norm of higher education is part of the historical process of
“rationalization” which sociologist Max Weber viewed as transforming modern
western society.
Faculties within these institutions have increasingly come under scrutiny
themselves for how “productive” they are in providing technical answers to the
concerns of everyday life. Assessment methods like prestige rankings and citation
analysis as indicators of “scholarly productivity” are increasingly championed as
legitimate ways to help college and university administrators evaluate faculty quality.
Academics working in public institutions of higher learning have historically
heard, and recognized at least in principle, that the public was the ultimate beneficiary
of their efforts. In the 1980s, however, many faculties have come to realize that the
public expects specific and measurable outcomes for tax dollars invested in public
institutions. The professoriate at most public institutions of higher learning today face
an array of faculty assignments and distribution-of-effort forms rarely conceived of a
generation ago.
Faculty members in both public and private research universities can easily
recount their duties in the university. These include teaching, research, and often
service. The assessment of teaching and service functions is usually straightforward;
service by the number of hours spent in community activities consistent with the
mission of the university, teaching by the number of hours spent in class and in
preparation for it during the semester. Although both of these duties have themselves
been the target of increased scrutiny during the past several decades, neither has
proved to be a major stumbling block to basically mathematical methods of tracking
faculty activity. A more difficult task, however, faces those administrators and
scholars who desire increased knowledge about “scholarly productivity.” Under the
assumption that academic scholarship in the university is technically assessable,
numerous attempts have been made to quantify this component of academic life.
Dimensions of faculty quality, upon which several important studies were based, were
investigated by scholars who themselves were well located in academic research
departments.
The investigation of factors involved in academic scholarship can be and has
been based on the scientific quest for understanding. Even in more conscientiously
performed studies, unexamined assumptions, which thwart both the investigations
attempted and conclusions reached, can be observed. One important study in the
literature laid the groundwork thusly. Spurred especially by the scientific and
120 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

technological revolution of the 1960’s a concern with increasing research productivity

has generated a prodigious number of research studies on research. By and large,
however, these inquiries have been directed to answering one question. What are the
correlates of research? In addition, these studies have been limited by an over-reliance
on a single measure of research productivity, namely, scholarly publications. The
questions of how and why faculties go about pursuing their research interests have
remained largely not investigated. (Pellino et al 1984)
The more general belief that the field of education is in essence, a scientific
endeavour contains several conceptual weaknesses. One has to do with the assertion
that the foundation of educational scholarship is to be located within the scientific
enterprise. Another is that the fruits of scholarship are in some way related to school
policy. The notion that scholarship must yield some type of product appears to be
taken for granted. Neither of the first two of these assumptions is well documented in
the literature of educational research and policy implementation. The last assumption
typically is mistaken as proof that there are in fact unproductive academics.
It is conceivable that the assessment of the scientific nature of scholarly
productivity within colleges of education might be done at the department level as
opposed to the college as a whole. For example, several studies on scholarly
productivity have found that educational psychologists typically dominate the ranks of
the most productive and have more journals in which to be cited. This observation
suggests that since educational psychologists are the “high priests” of the
technological myth in college education, analysis of productivity among them might
be meaningful. On the other hand, those whose scholarship is less tied to scientific
claims or technological application may, by definition, be less “productive.” There is
no unanimous agreement that the social and behavioural sciences are the starting point
in educational scholarship; thus when researchers find various departments
overrepresented or underrepresented in objective profiles of scholarly productivity,
what they are finding represents the diversity of orientations and interests within such
colleges, not more or less productive faculty.
Analysis of scholarly productivity that focuses on the scientific nature of
educational scholarship might be useful in assessing how scientific one’s faculty is,
but less useful in assessing the other forms of academic scholarship not dependent on
some particular version of science.
Students entering a higher education institution exhibit certain characteristics
and competencies. Evaluating the impact of university necessitated assessing changes
resulting from the university environment, on the value added by a university. Any
attempt to measure student outcomes is related to institutional goal-setting. Alexander
Astin (1975) and his associates divide type of outcomes into cognitive and affective
and type of data into behavioural and psychological as shown in Exhibit A.

Type of Outcome
Cognitive Affective

Knowledge Self-concept
General Intelligence Interests
Psychological
Type of Data

Critical- thinking ability Values

Basic skills Attitudes
Special aptitudes Beliefs
Academic achievement Drive for achievement
Satisfaction with college
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 121

Level of educational
attainment Choice of major career
Vocational
achievements: Avocations

Behavioral
Level of responsibility Mental health
income, Citizenship
Awards of special
recognition Interpersonal relations

Exhibit A. Taxonomy of student-outcome Measures

7.1 Showing Productivity Improvements.

After setting productivity objectives, defining productivity and measuring

productivity, the next step is to demonstrate productivity improvements, which can be
done in several ways. One is to show an increase in revenue or participation that
derives from efforts that did not require an increase in tuition, fees, or taxes. Another
is to show a significant increase in effectiveness, such as the employment rates of
recent graduates, without increasing costs or using additional resources. Numerous
measures are possible and each university should concentrate effort on those that best
fit to its own circumstances.

7.2 Strategies to Increase Productivity

There is an abundant literature on possible strategies for increasing

productivity in higher education, which can help universities to understand how they
can reduce costs and increase student quality. Many of these strategies require
changes in the administrative culture and the mindset of faculty and administrators.
Attempts to implement these strategies may be met with resistance or even legal
challenges from the various professional organizations and associations that support
faculty and administrators.
Strategies for increasing productivity focus on improving the two key
components of productivity that were defined earlier - effectiveness and efficiency.
These strategies include privatization, decentralization, improving student quality, and
increasing the flexibility of faculty.
a. Privatization
One way of increasing the cost-efficiency of higher education is through the
privatization of certain services. Most universities are vertically integrated. While
these services contribute to student learning, there is no reason why these services
cannot be performed by private contractors.
When vertical integration exists, the full costs of inside staff, such as wages and
benefits, may be accounted for in other budget or service categories, thus making it
difficult to assess the full costs of a certain service. The fees charged by outside
contractors, however, will more clearly represent the full cost of providing a particular
service. In addition, competitive pressures will increase the likelihood that private
contractors will provide an efficient quantity and quality of labor for each service.
b. Decentralization
122 European Research Studies, Volume IX, Issue (3-4) 2006

Privatization is part of a larger strategy aimed at increasing productivity in

higher education—the decentralization of the current administrative structure. While
decentralization frequently occurs in the private sector, universities have generally not
followed suit. Centralized administrative structures in universities have been criticized
for several reasons. For one, administrators can generally add staff to meet their needs
without having to justify the additions to anyone except other administrators.
Decentralization can result in several benefits for universities. First, academic
departments will have more control over their costs and staffing needs. Departments
will have more flexibility in aligning their resources to meet changes in student
demands. Universities provide too little in the way of support staff for faculty, thus
forcing faculty to perform clerical duties. If individual academic departments had
more control over their own budgets, they might decide to replace a faculty position
with several support staff to improve efficiency. At the same time, university
administrators would have to resist the temptation to cut support staff in times of
budget stringency. Creating a structure that gets the incentives right is not easy, but
will be an essential feature of longer run reforms to improve efficiency.
c. Improving Student Quality
The quality of students—the knowledge and skills they gain from a
university education—should be the primary goal of any institution of higher learning.
However, just how to increase student quality remains unclear to many faculties. One
reason for this lack of clarity is that many faculties, especially those at research
institutions, see teaching as a secondary job responsibility behind publishing in
academic journals and acquiring research grants. Another reason is that most faculty
members do not have training in good teaching strategies.
Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson summarize good teaching practices in
their article, “Seven Principles for Good Practices in Undergraduate Teaching.”(19)
These practices include encouraging student/faculty contact, encouraging active
learning, encouraging cooperation among students, giving prompt feedback,
communicating high expectations, encouraging more time on each task, and
respecting diverse talents and ways of learning. An important point is that the current
passive lecture format in most universities does not account for most of the practices
just discussed. Even in smaller teaching-oriented colleges many of these practices are
likely to be absent. And, there are huge new opportunities to employ new technologies
such as the Internet to improve efficiency. For example, there is no reason for libraries
to subscribe to statistical publications when the same data are readily available
through the Internet.
d. Increased Flexibility of Faculty Staffing.
Instructional expenditures have historically accounted for nearly 35 percent of
total university expenditures nationwide. Although universities spend roughly one-
third of every dollar on instruction, different productivity concepts are appropriate for
research and teaching functions. With respect to research, it is appropriate to measure
productivity in terms of the quantity and quality of academic research and the amount
of external funding acquired. With respect to teaching, it is appropriate to measure
productivity by teaching loads and academic advising.
Much of the discussion relating to the role of faculty in contributing to
productivity in higher education involves increasing the time that faculty spend in the
classroom, enhancing the quality of instruction, and increased flexibility of faculty
staffing. Given the expense of instruction relative to overall university expenditures,
an important cost-saving and quality-enhancing strategy is to better align faculty with
student needs. Currently, in many universities, as student demands for certain majors
 Productivity Improvements in Education: A Replαy 123

or classes ebb and flow over time there is little change in the number of faculty in
each department. A failure to match teaching capacity with student demand is
completely opposite the private sector, where changes in business conditions directly
influence staffing levels.
Several policies can increase the flexibility of faculty. But, arguably, the
greatest obstacle to increased flexibility of faculty is tenure. An economic argument
for tenure is that it saves initial expense on the part of the university. The saving arises
because faculty with tenure, or those hired with the possibility of tenure, will work at
a lower salary in return for the guarantee of lifetime employment. However, while
there may be initial cost savings from tenure, the resulting inflexibility imposed by
tenure has greater costs in terms of both dollars and student quality. Tenure prevents
significant staffing changes in response to changes in student demands, and also may
prevent lower quality faculty from being replaced by higher quality faculty.
Administrators and management professionals have suggested strategies that can
increase faculty flexibility in the presence of tenure, although each of these strategies
is not without problems. Some of these strategies may be met with opposition from
faculty or even legal challenges. One strategy is to impose tenure quotas on the
number or percentage of the faculty who may hold tenure at any one time.
e. The use of citation analysis to assess scholarly productivity
The current state of the art in the analysis of scholarly productivity, citation
analysis, unfortunately provides a good illustration of this latter phenomenon. The
conceptual difficulties besetting those who use this methodology are suggested by
their entering focus as well as by their technique. John Smart provides an adequate
working definition of this approach: “Citation analysis is a special form of
bibliographic research used to assess the quality or importance of scientific
contributions. This methodology is based on reference citations found in scientific
publications and assumes that citation frequency data can be used to assess the
significance of scientific contributions of individual scientists, academic departments,
and scholarly journals.”

8. References

Ames, R. & Ames, C. (Eds.). (1984). Research on Motivation in Education, Vol. 1:

Student Motivation. San Diego: Academic Press.
Ames, R. & Ames, C. (Eds.). (1989). Research on Motivation in Education, Vol. 3:
Goals and Cognitions. San Diego: Academic Press.
Berliner, D. (1989). Furthering our understanding of motivation and environments. In
R. Ames & C. Ames (Eds.), Research on Motivation in Education, Vol.
3: Goals and Cognitions (pp. 317-342). San Diego: Academic Press.
deCharms, R. (1984). Motivation enhancement in educational settings. In R. Ames &
C. Ames (Eds.), Research on Motivation in Education, Vol. 3: Student
Motivation (pp. 275-313). San Diego: Academic Press.
Deci, E. & Ryan, R. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self- determination in Human
Behavior. New York: Plenum.
Fullan, M. (1991). The New Meaning of Educational Change. New York: Teachers
College Press/ OISE Press.
Hastings, N. & Schwieso, J. (Eds.). (1987). New Directions in Educational
Psychology, 2: Behavior and Motivation in the Classroom. East
Lewes: Falmer Press.
Glennan T.K. and Melmed, A., (2000). Forecasting the use of educational technology:
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Nolen, S. & Nicholls, J. (In press). A place to begin (again) in research

on student motivation: Teachers' beliefs. Journal of Teaching and Teacher
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Glenn R. Pellino et al., (1984). ”The Dimensions of Academic Scholarship: Faculty
and Administrator Views,” Research in Higher Education 20 (1984): 103-
115; this quote is from page 103.
Peslak R. Alan, (2005). The educational Productivity Paradox communications co of
the ACM October /Vol. 48 No. 10.
Edward Shaffer, (1980) “The University in Service to Technocracy, Educational
Theory 30, no. 1, 47-52.
John C. Smart, (1983). “Perceived Quality and Citation Rates of Education Journals,”
Research in Higher Education 19, no. 2, 175-82.
Lawrence, Paul R., (1975). Organizational and Environment: Management
Differentiation and Integration. Homewood: IL. Irvin.