How Student Affairs Administrators Spend Their Time: Differences by Institutional Setting.

Abstract

As costs associated with higher education have skyrocketed in recent years, stakeholders have demanded evidence of institutional outcomes and productivity. Researchers have examined student outcomes and faculty productivity but studies related to productivity of student affairs administrators are limited. We investigated one element of productivity, time, by analyzing the activities in which these administrators engage. Results reveal common activities among student affairs administrators but different patterns of use among participants by institutional type. Throughout the 1990s higher education enjoyed extended support in a variety of arenas (Gaither, 2002). A booming economy led to increases in state and federal investments in the academy. New academic programs that addressed emerging technical professions attracted new students and enrollments grew steadily. These good times, however, have come to an abrupt end in the early part of the 21st century. The economic slump that emerged in 2001 and accelerated in 2002 required experts to project long-term implications for post-secondary education. Uy 2015, more than 18 million students are expected to be enrolled in higher education institutions across the country: a 20% increase over 1998 levels. Over the same period financial support for higher education is expected to stagnate, resulting in an estimated $38 billion shortfall (Benjamin, 1998). Increased enrollments, expanded curricula, and fiscal constraints have prompted calls from stakeholders for higher education institutions to document productivity and outcomes. One approach institutions have adopted to respond to such demands is to investigate outcomes for students. Traditional measures of student outcomes include grade point averages, graduation rates, GRE scores, percentages of students who go on to graduate and professional schools, and job placement rates. While these data reveal the end products of the academic enterprise they do not describe what leads to such outcomes. For example, Astin (1984) posits that the physical and psychological students invest in their educational endeavors directly relates to the outcomes they achieve. Indeed, recent developments in assessment have focused on how students spend their in an effort to explore what types of investments correlate to successful outcomes; Pace's (1990) College Student Experiences Questionnaire is one such example. Certainly there is ample evidence about the positive influence on academic success that results when students and faculty members spend together in formal or informal settings (Astin, 1985, 1993; Endo & Harpel, 1982; Pascarella, 1980; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). The second approach institutions have taken to address questions of productivity is by accounting for time, specifically the ways in which faculty members allocate their time. This fundamental debate pits spent teaching against that invested in research, and scholars have taken a variety of approaches to the matter. Massy and Zemsky (1994) argue that time (p. 2) tips the scales between the faculty members spend teaching and the they devote to research. Professional interests, like research and consulting, are perceived as highly valued activities in the academic enterprise while teaching is not; faculty members have confounded the educational process by maximizing the they have to pursue these professional interests (i.e., discretionary time) at the expense of spent teaching. Juxtaposing teaching against research may be too simplistic a way of assessing productivity, however. Differences in productivity may be more closely linked to differences in disciplines. Measuring productivity, therefore, may require more complex analyses than scholars have traditionally undertaken. Multilevel models that reflect both individual and group (e.g., disciplinary, departmental) influences on productivity may reflect more accurately what faculty members accomplish. …