Survey Indicates Professors Enjoy Undergraduates

The notion that professors scorn undergraduate teaching proved wrong according to Talcott Parsons, Professor of Sociology, and Gerald M. Platt, Lecturer on Sociology, in their 3-year study of the American academic profession.

The two sociologists, working on a $70,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, questioned 400 faculty members at eight institutions of varying size, quality, and research orientation.

They found that 82 per cent of the faculty at the larger institutions wanted an even balance between undergraduate and graduate teaching, while only 6 per cent wanted more graduate teaching. All the professors polled wished to increase their research time.

Reduce Administration

The study says, in part, "there is no significant tendency to wish to eliminate or even minimze any of the three substantive functions: teaching graduates, undergraduates, and research." But faculty members wished to reduce their administrative loads by half.

Parsons and Platt also found that academic freedom and tenure in office are more important than salary in attracting faculty members. However, they found that pressures to maintain competence are high under these conditions.

Based on a method developed during the course of study, the sociologists rated the institutions on a scale of Institutional Differentiation. They are using this scale to evaluate 116 institutions in a more thorough study of the academic profession to be released in 1970.

The scale was based on size, quality, and research-orientation of the institution. In those institutions rated highest by this scale, most of the professors said that they preferred to be influential members of their department rather than having formal authority as department chairmen.