Rising taxes and stagnant wages created an environment of growing public distrust of government, and some taxpayers revolted. To cover rising costs, parents and students were asked to pay higher tuition. Because the personnel budget often constitutes 80 to 90 percent of an institution's budget, state legislatures became increasingly interested in ways to increase the productivity of personnel. Studies of faculty workload were the result. The business community has been a major critic of the quality and productivity of modern universities.
Many legislators view higher education as unproductive and unaccountable.
Both sets of concerns increase the pressure to find ways to improve productivity in higher education. Over 15 states, several systems, and three national studies have collected data on faculty workload. Time spent on teaching or teaching-related activities is larger, depending on the number of activities included in the definition. Percent of time spent on an activity provides another view of faculty's effort, and teaching usually exceeds all other activities. The few instances of longitudinal data or data from large-scale surveys indicate that time spent teaching has declined.