Adverse Incentives in Universities and the Impact on our National Competency Build Up

Today, I was at lunch with an older gentleman. Older in the sense of, was-sent-off-to-NS-in-a-3-tonner and ate-food-cooked-by-fellow-NSFs. He mentioned that he took an AI course at NUS Computer Science and had an extremely negative experience where lecturers did not care about students and were unable to express ideas well. He contrasted this with the good treatment he received at NUS's Institute of Systems Science (a centre for professional learning) where the instructors "want you to succeed".

He surmised that the failings of the former were due to the overriding importance placed on publishing, and that teaching was seen as a chore to be quickly finished so one might get back to doing things that affect their KPIs.

Now, in the course of that interaction, he came across as a knowledgeable and experienced IT professional with a very balanced personality, so I am inclined towards the view that he arrived at his position on his AI lecturer(s) at NUS Computer Science in a fair and balanced manner.

It is thus disturbing that professionals seeking to extend their skill sets can come away with little or nothing after a few days away from work and having their employers pay a pretty penny (a neat double whammy). This is not to say that all university instructors for professional development courses are unable to help their students extend their knowledge and skills. The point is that we should be seeking guarantees for a minimum service level for professional development. Otherwise, any initiatives with the objective of "raising productivity" through professional education will inherit the lack of a "minimum service level".

The incentives in universities that place little value on teaching are well known. Unfortunately, they are tremendously damaging. The question that tax payers should be asking themselves is what exactly they are funding. If the role of Singapore's universities is to break new ground in the physical sciences, medicine, technology and social sciences, can we say we are succeeding? If the role of Singapore's universities is to impart knowledge and skills to students prior to their entry to the workforce, are we succeeding? On both counts, we are not very successful.

One of the most cynical views I have come across is that a small number of exceptional individuals around the world appear to be justifying the contemplative life for many others. There is some truth to it. Some people do love to learn, but are not as keen on the grind of breaking new ground. These people tend to love to teach, but there is no suitable incentive scheme that enables them to build a rewarding career (those few new "teaching schemes" considered).

The trouble with adjusting the incentive framework for university faculty is that it will put us out of joint with international practice, possibly making Singapore an unattractive place to be a faculty member unless one does not want to ever work at a university outside of Singapore.

However, without effective incentives, we have to rely on the "milk of human goodness: to generate good professional development results, and history has shown us that said milk is not exactly reliable.

It is necessary to take a "calibrated" approach to incentives in university faculty. Ground breaking research is great to have, but unless we are in a technological arms race, it has the lowest priority among the three major roles of university faculty which are, highest priority first, (i) imparting knowledge and skills effectively, (ii) inspiring students, and (iii) doing high quality research.

On Effective Incentives at Universities

University faculty members have different profiles. Simplistically, there are (i) those focused on research and/or industrial collaboration, (ii) those who emphasize teaching, and (iii) some who blend the two in a relatively balanced ratio. Both the functions of (i) and (ii) are important, but the former is seen as the more glamorous among faculty members and university promotion boards and search committees. Coming from the perspective of the university as a tool to support a nation's sustained competitive advantage, teaching edges out research and industrial collaboration in importance.

To develop effective incentives, we have to be a little hard nosed and be willing to bruise a few egos. We must face the fact that the "university system" has used the inventions and discoveries of a few talented individuals to justify the "contemplative life" for manifold numbers of others. The proliferation of uninteresting journal articles and conference papers is but a symptom of this.

"Research" takes pole position in universities as search and promotion preferences make clear. Those with personal leanings towards teaching advanced subjects effectively are edged out of the faculty or are forced to do "research" that turns out to be uninteresting (and they probably never get tenure anyway).

In Singapore, government ownership of universities allows changes to be made to align incentives in universities with national economic objectives. One way is to allow all faculty members to do what they do best. There are two related ways of measuring performance: absolute and relative (rank order). Additionally, there are different metrics by which performance can be measured. For instance, (i) the research productivity-industrial grants ruler, (ii) the teaching evaluation-student performance (in later courses) ruler, and hybrid metrics. Faculty members should be evaluated on all measures in absolute terms, and also have his/her rank on each measure computed. Remuneration and promotion should be based on all those measures.

To give a sense of what I am alluding to, consider the following. In principle we want to reward the top ranked performers, but at the highest levels of academic research performance, rank means little, so all top tier researcher (by absolute performance) should be rewarded highly regardless of rank; rank should only come in at the "lower" tiers. This conduces to the creation of a group with many top tier researchers and encourages faculty to move into the top rung. On teaching, similar incentives should be in place. Appropriate performance measurement logic should be there to "determine" the "role" each faculty member has crafted for himself/herself and use only the appropriate performance metrics.

The illustration in the above paragraph may seem a bit sketchy, but should give a flavor of what I am thinking. Incentives should be there to encourage faculty members to perform at the highest levels of performance of research and/or teaching. Staff who are mediocre at both over a sustained period should be let go. The university system should not be a place where only the forms of research are aped and knowledge is purported to be transferred. It should be a place where research is done and knowledge is transferred effectively.

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Postscript: I'm writing this while "stuck in Rome". My passport was stolen from my left pant pocket on a crowded train 4h before my flight. The embassy was closed, and the police report was not accepted as a valid document for traveling out of Europe. When I got in touch with MFA, and through them the local Singapore consulate, it turned out the Italian Honorary Consul General had died and consular authority was transferred to Geneva. I was stunned to hear that. It all made things more surreal. Even stranger was when, today, I got an SMS from DBS Cards telling me that "I" had charged $15xx.xx for a United Airlines flight from the Las Vegas, Nevada branch. Woo.

Measuring the Efficacy of Education: A Possible Methodology

Given the mission of education to enable upward mobility, an obvious methodology for measuring the efficacy of education suggests itself: measure the decrease in the level of correlation of student performance on family background from primary 6 to secondary 4/5.

It goes without saying that student performance at Primary 6 is strongly related on family background. Given that secondary school is a substantial part of the Singapore education experience, where academic preferences are formed, the Secondary 4/5 level is a good time to make the comparison. In fact, a first reading may be obtained at the end of Primary 1/2, which will be very strongly related to family background.

Any competent econometrician would be ale to do the analysis given the data. We should be measuring this and using it as a KPI.