INSTITUTIONAL AND TECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS ON FACULTY GROSS PRODUCTIVITY IN AMERICAN DOCTORAL UNIVERSITIES

Scholars disagree about the manner and extent of environmental structuring of university activities. This study supports arguments that the environment highly structures the relationships between faculty and the academic products of undergraduate instruction, graduate instruction, and research. Multiple correlation coefficients exceeded 90 percent for regressions of faculty size on counts of undergraduate and graduate enrollments and published articles for all universities classified as Research I or II or Doctoral I or II, demonstrating how constrained is doctoral faculty gross productivity in doctoral universities in the United States. Possible institutional and technical constraints are discussed. The regressions reveal economics of scale and economies of scope for some mixes of faculty academic activities, but not for others. Implications on productivity are explored for university type, control, and science emphasis. A typology for productivity studies is also outlined.