A game theoretic analysis of faculty competition and academic standards

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V. Foreign Higher Education and Education Systems, International Relations, Bilateral Relations
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Author	CORREA, Hector
Title	A game theoretic analysis of faculty competition and academic standards
Publication year	2001
Source/Footnote	In: Higher education policy. - 14 (2001) 2, S. 175 - 182
Inventory number	13353
Keywords	Studentenschaft : Studienverhalten ; Lehre
Abstract	Grade inflation, particulary but not exclusively in higher education, is a serious concern of educators, educational policy-makers and researchers. It has been suggested that student evaluations of faculty are among its principal causes because students tend to give favorable evaluations to professors who give high grades, and that these evaluations are used by university administrators as part of the criteria for promotions, salary increases and similar faculty benefits. This explanation suggests that faculty members compete for favorable student evaluations. It can be generalized to state that faculty members cooperate and compete not only for favorable evaluations, but also for the enrollment of students in the courses they teach. The relevance of faculty cooperation and competition suggests that the Theory of Games could be a useful instrument to analyze the interactions among university professors. The object of this paper is to present model based on these assumptions and to analyze the consequences that can be derived from it that are relevant for university policy decisions. (HRK / Abstract übernommen) Correa, Hector, E-Mail: correal@vms.cis.pitt.edu