How the Best Universities Inadvertently Ruin Our Schools 189

How the Best Universities Inadvertently Ruin Our Schools 189 obviously respected by Boeing, so he is a senior and successful man in his field. This means a small teaching load since the best professors teach the least. Three semester-long courses in a year is a light load at a big state university. You might wonder, as an outsider to the ins and outs of the uni- versity, why the best professors teach the least. You also might wonder why I knew the types of courses he would teach and what I mean by that. I will explain. To start this explanation, it is important to understand why pro- fessors are “rewarded” with light teaching loads. (Note the word load. This is the normal way this is discussed in a university.) I was given an extraordinarily light load at Northwestern for two reasons. One reason was that universities, like baseball teams, recruit so-called “su- perstars” (yes, that is how they are referred to in the university) from competitors. So Northwestern had to beat Yale’s offer in my case. At Yale I taught one semester-long course per year, so Northwestern sim- ply made me a better offer. The reason both of these universities would even consider such a light load is that I earned money for the university. As I used to tell my children when they asked “why” questions, in the end it is usually about money. I was recruited by Northwestern (in 1988), but I was really being recruited by Andersen Consulting. They offered Northwestern (that is, they offered me if I came to Northwestern) $30 million (over a 10-year period). Yes, that’s right, $30 million. I think you can see that North- western didn’t really care what I taught or when I taught it. They wanted that money. And, they also wanted the prestige. Before I go too much further, I need to explain the prestige thing because it is very important. In fact, the prestige issue for professors and universities is precisely the root of the problem in our education system. This will take some time to explain, so let me start simply for now. When Harvard plays Yale in football, they are battling for prestige. But the battle may not be on the field exactly. The real battle is in how powerful and important the alumni who attend the game have become and how big their respective endowments have become and who has the best chemistry department or business school. It is a real battle. The battle is for reputation. And, although it may seem silly to take this battle seriously, it is taken very seriously. There is no World HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023935