Early Patterns of Faculty Compensation for Developing and Teaching Distance Learning Courses

This paper is an investigation into compensation practices for faculty developing and teaching distance learning courses. The research divides itself into two basic lines of inquiry: direct and indirect compensation (including royalties, training, and professional recognition). Also, economic models for distance learning are examined with a view towards understanding faculty compensation within attempts to reduce labor costs. The primary questions this research attempts to answer are: What are the current policies and practices in higher education for compensating faculty who develop and teach distance learning format courses? Will the increased use of distance learning format courses alter overall labor conditions for American faculty? If so, how? Although information is limited, it is found that faculty work in both developing and teaching distance learning format courses tends thus far in this early stage to be seen as work-for-hire under regular load with little additional indirect compensation or royalty arrangements.

How to Boost Faculty Research Performance in HEI’s to Improve Intellectual Property by Integrating it with Faculty Compensation – A “Theory of Accountability” based Framework

The objective of campus based higher education is now shifting from mass education to customized education and in such model involving students in research by faculty members is an essential part. Such research focused higher education model not only benefits the students but also provides an opportunity for the institution to create intellectual property in its name. To encourage faculty members to be involved in research and publications, higher education institutions (HEIs) are trying to find various strategies. Faculty compensation is one of the important strategies in higher education institutions as faculty members are the brain of the system and creators of an intellectual asset to the institution. Making faculty compensation dynamic is a very attractive and effective way in order to involve faculty members in research and publications. In this paper, we have studied the changing objectives of autonomous HEIs like private universities towards developing Intellectual property by shifting their focus towards research and publications using their financial autonomy. As a part of such initiatives, an improved model of faculty compensation is proposed based on Annual Performance Based Component (APBC) and discussed how it adds value to the HEIs by inspiring the faculty member’s involvement and accountability to create a tangible asset of intangible intellectual property. The paper also discusses the cases of pessimistic expectations, most-likely expectations, and optimistic expectations of faculty performance and its financial implications on the institution by simulating these estimates.