Table 1.
Growing Perverse Incentives in Academia
| Incentive | Intended effect | Actual effect |
|---|---|---|
| “Researchers rewarded for increased number of publications.” | “Improve research productivity,” provide a means of evaluating performance. | “Avalanche of” substandard, “incremental papers”; poor methods and increase in false discovery rates leading to a “natural selection of bad science” (Smaldino and Mcelreath, 2016); reduced quality of peer review |
| “Researchers rewarded for increased number of citations.” | Reward quality work that influences others. | Extended reference lists to inflate citations; reviewers request citation of their work through peer review |
| “Researchers rewarded for increased grant funding.” | “Ensure that research programs are funded, promote growth, generate overhead.” | Increased time writing proposals and less time gathering and thinking about data. Overselling positive results and downplay of negative results. |
| Increase PhD student productivity | Higher school ranking and more prestige of program. | Lower standards and create oversupply of PhDs. Postdocs often required for entry-level academic positions, and PhDs hired for work MS students used to do. |
| Reduced teaching load for research-active faculty | Necessary to pursue additional competitive grants. | Increased demand for untenured, adjunct faculty to teach classes. |
| “Teachers rewarded for increased student evaluation scores.” | “Improved accountability; ensure customer satisfaction.” | Reduced course work, grade inflation. |
| “Teachers rewarded for increased student test scores.” | “Improve teacher effectiveness.” | “Teaching to the tests; emphasis on short-term learning.” |
| “Departments rewarded for increasing U.S. News ranking.” | “Stronger departments.” | Extensive efforts to reverse engineer, game, and cheat rankings. |
| “Departments rewarded for increasing numbers of BS, MS, and PhD degrees granted.” | “Promote efficiency; stop students from being trapped in degree programs; impress the state legislature.” | “Class sizes increase; entrance requirements” decrease; reduce graduation requirements. |
| “Departments rewarded for increasing student credit/contact hours (SCH).” | “The university's teaching mission is fulfilled.” | “SCH-maximization games are played”: duplication of classes, competition for service courses. |
Modified from Regehr (pers. comm., 2015) with permission.