FACULTY DISCRETIONARY TIME - DEPARTMENTS AND THE ACADEMIC RATCHET

Portions of the authors' academic ratchet theory are tested by quantif ying the tradeoff between class size and teaching load, using data fro m four liberal arts colleges and two research universities. The findin gs indicate that class-size utility is asymmetric around teaching meth od-dependent norms and that research university faculty prefer smaller teaching loads more fervently than liberal arts faculty.