The quantity-quality tradeoff: a cross-national, longitudinal analysis of national student-faculty ratios in higher educ
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The quantity‑quality tradeoff: a cross‑national, longitudinal analysis of national student‑faculty ratios in higher education Elizabeth Buckner1 · You Zhang1 Accepted: 7 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This article analyzes cross-national trends in national student-faculty ratios (SFRs) over the past five decades. In descriptive analyses, we find that SFRs have increased globally, driven by particularly large increases in low-income countries. We analyze two cross-national datasets to examine factors associated with national SFRs. We find that national SFRs are positively associated with gross tertiary enrollment rates and particularly so in low-income countries. In contrast, both the female share of faculty and research spending are associated with having lower national SFRs. The findings shed light on how national higher education systems are responding to massification pressures and suggest that differentiating faculty roles is one way that countries curb their rising SFRs as enrollments grow. Keywords National student-faculty ratio · Higher education quality · Massification · Crossnational analysis
Introduction One of the fundamental shifts affecting higher education globally has been massification: enrollments in higher education have increased dramatically over the past 50 years in almost every country (Baker 2014; Marginson 2016; Schofer & Meyer 2005; Scott 1995; Tight 2019; Trow 1972, 2007). In light of this expansion, there is the general assumption that massification has resulted in rising average class sizes and increasing student-faculty ratios (SFRs) at both the institutional and national levels (Chang et al. 2015; Hornsby & Osman 2014; Mohamedbhai 2014; Saint 2004). This is a major concern for the field of higher education because increasing numbers of students per faculty are thought to be associated with fewer opportunities for faculty-student interactions and general concerns over the quality of learning. However, there has been very little systematic analysis of national SFRs in higher education worldwide over time, and as a result, we have little understanding of global trends
* Elizabeth Buckner [email protected] 1
University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Higher Education
or factors associated with changing SFRs. Important unresolved questions for the field include the following: have SFRs increased over time? If so, by how much? Have different regions of the world been affected differentially? What factors are associated with changes in SFRs in higher education? This article brings new cross-national and longitudinal data to analyze national SFRs in higher education over time. Our purposes are twofold: first, we seek to document crossnational and longitudinal trends; secondly, we seek to develop a conceptual framework that explains variation in national SFRs in higher education. SFRs, defined as the total number of students per faculty member, are not the same as average class size,
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