Introduction

College teaching can be improved by a decrease in the over-valuation of published research as the main measure of a teacher’s worth’ writes one successful college president. The interaction of undergraduate student with college teacher and undergraduate student with university scholar is intellectually different, not better or worse, but different; in fact, better for some and worse for others. In examining the academic labor market and teaching, attention is necessarily given to assessing the effectiveness of college and university teaching and teachers and to the evaluation of the relative contributions of both teaching and scholarly and scientific research. American institutions of higher learning, although perhaps a disappointment at home, are fairly well regarded around the world. American colleges and universities attract almost 400,000 foreign students a year, over sixty countries being represented by at least 1,000 students pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.