Integrating Faculty and Student Life Cycles1

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 satisfaction, and fulfillment-are not anymore satisfied in departments or institutions with high national prestige (Bess, 1973). Since prestige is derived primarily from research reputation, the academic social system and, in some cases, misguided personal propensities would seem to be leading faculty to perform tasks which may not satisfy their most basic needs. Many are drawn, in other words, to continue to do research in the belief that its career rewards will provide higher personal satisfactions. In a way, then, they are thus seduced into giving relatively less attention through teaching to meeting student needs-an activity which might, under different conditions, yield them profound satisfactions in great abundance. Students at most institutions under present circumstances are also not able to fulfill their most important needs, particularly those which involve their developing personalities. Colleges and universities usually give greater attention to establishing structures designed to help students acquire cognitive knowledge, in service of broad liberal education and/or, presumably, career preparation. Satisfaction of student needs for emotional and interpersonal growth and for selfknowledge are, at best, by-products of the college experience. They are rarely explicit goals of the institution. Hence, at least two of the three main constituencies on our college and university campuses (faculty and students) may exist under conditions antithetical, or at least not conducive, to meeting the most profound of their collective and individual needs.