Are Professors Worth It? The Value-Added and Costs of Tutorial Instructors

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Human Resources
Year: 2020
Volume: 55
Issue: 3

Score contribution per author:

1.341 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

A substantial share of university instruction happens in tutorial sessions—small group instruction given parallel to lectures. We study whether instructors with a higher academic rank teach tutorials more effectively in a setting where students are randomly assigned to tutorial groups. We find this to be largely not the case. Academic rank is unrelated to students’ current and future performance and only weakly positively related to students’ course evaluations. Building on these results, we discuss different staffing scenarios that show that universities can substantially reduce costs by increasingly relying on lower-ranked instructors for tutorial teaching.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:uwp:jhriss:v:55:y:2020:i:3:p:836-863
Journal Field
Labor
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-25