Professional School Faculty in Higher Education: Where the Ivory Tower meets the Real World

The rigor versus relevance debate has been ongoing in universities for years, but faculty in professional programs are working on the front lines of the debate. The competing pressures of being seen as legitimate academics within the university and contributing to the knowledge, authority, and status of the profession, place faculty in the middle of the academic-practitioner gap. How do these pressures impact the scholarly output and recruitment practices of professional programs? Our exploration is accomplished by first, understanding the relationship between professional programs and universities and the consequent pressures placed on faculty. Second, we explore the knowledge dissemination (KD) methods of business school faculty and compare it to faculty at other professional programs (i.e., law and social work) based on a sample of 1036 faculty. Third, we assess the expectations of faculty teaching in professional programs through a sample of 438 faculty recruitment advertisements. The results show tha...