ABSTRACT
Up-to-date and professionally engaged faculty convey up-to-date knowledge to students, some of whom may go on to graduate school and further advance their field. Without professional engagement, the depth, utility, and timeliness of what students learn is limited. Budgetary decision-makers and administrators in the vast majority of teaching colleges and universities in the United States are ambivalent about the need for faculty to stay immersed in their discipline. Pay is certainly not the motivator for university teaching appointments, because the pay in teaching colleges and universities is lower than that of peers in tier-one institutions and lower than in virtually all other professions. Another problem affects research and scholarly work: faculty talent is not divided into tiers. Those who created the tiered system of public higher education thought Ph. D. holders were stratified. There is another unanticipated consequence of tiered public higher education. It is an enormous waste of faculty talent.
