Professor Preferences, Public Goods, and Student Performance

Abstract

One of the main concerns of educational studies in general and certainly of this book is the question of the determinants of how much students learn. Conventionally, discussions of this question focus on the effects which the immediate environmental factors and faculty and student characteristics have on student performance. This is, frankly speaking, a reflection of the dominance of the behavioralists’ point of view in education. When considering the possibility that choice behavior may be affecting the outcome, it is almost by second nature that we direct our attention to the possible choices the student may have and may be making among achievement levels in various courses and between leisure and academic attainment. When faculty behavior is considered, the discussion tends to be normative: that is, the discussants tend to talk in terms of how faculty members should behave.