Integrating Faculty and Student Life Cycles

For some time, certain students in universities have been decrying the alleged neglect by faculty of their teaching responsibilities. Among the ostensible causes of this condition, if it exists, are the structure of the reward system for faculty in higher education (e.g., the usually higher status and pecuniary benefits of research) and the presumed distinctive needs of the kinds of persons recruited and socialized into the profession. That is, with respect to teaching, most faculty are reputed to be neither constrained by the system nor by their natural interests to devote the required time and effort. They would rather seek satisfactions through research careers in academic departments with reputations for high quality. There is now some evidence, however, that faculty needs of the most fundamentally human kind—for belonging, autonomy, ego satis faction, and fulfillment—are not anymore satisfied in departments or institutions with high national prestige (Bess, 1973). Since prestige is