Back before the explosion of the higher ed sector, starting with the Higher Education Act of 1965, most professors had a teaching load of four classes per semester, meeting four hours per week. Among the unfortunate results of the explosion has been a big move away from actual teaching and toward the supposedly more prestigious research. Much of that research is useless or even toxic.

In today’s Martin Center article, David Randall of NAS argues in favor of a return to the 4-4 teaching load for most faculty.

He writes, “We face the Long Night — not in a distant generation but now. We do not have the luxury of time. We have at most 20 years to craft the lifeboats that will save the memory of the West — 20 years before there are too few professors left to revive each of the myriad disciplines in the academy. We must engage in triage now, choose which disciplines we can save, and decide which must die.”

Those “lifeboats” won’t be created by profs who devote most of their time to abstruse research projects. We need actual teachers.

Randall continues, “But we won’t get them unless tradition-minded professors learn to honor the 4-4 professor. They must learn a new way of thinking, which praises the Hero Teacher who has educated 1,000 professors and teachers more than it lauds the Hero Scholar who has written 10 excellent books. And that way of thinking can’t simply be imposed on professors. Tradition-minded professors must take up a teaching vocation themselves.”

I think Randall is right — we don’t need more academic papers and books; we need scholars who want to teach students about the foundations of our civilization.

© National Review