A UTILITY MODEL FOR TEACHING LOAD DECISIONS IN ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS

The authors model the class size and teaching load decisions of academ ic departments in terms of a departmental utility function. Utility is postulated to be asymmetric around class size and teaching load norms , and variables for curricular structure, disciplinary domain, and ins titutional type are taken into account. Maximization of the utility fu nction produces decision rules for the number of sections to be offere d for each course, and hence the faculty's overall teaching load. A no nlinear estimator is developed for the decision rules' parameters and applied to data from four liberal arts colleges and two research unive rsities. Results are consistent with theories about faculty discretion ary time and with expectations about the effects of curricular structu re on class size. The paper concludes with a discussion about the effe cts of enrollment uncertainty on faculty load decisions. (C) 1997 Else vier Science Ltd.