The business economist at work: contributions to higher education Part1

FOR THE PAST ten years I have been MBA Director at Niagara University, a private liberal arts college of 3,000 students established in 1856 in Niagara Falls, New York. For the first eight of those years, I simultaneously served as Dean of the College of Business Administration. For the past two years, and prior to my holding the dual administrative appointments, I taught MBA and undergraduate economics and business students. The "Business Economist at Work" series has always interested me, because prospective undergraduate students and especially parents invariably ask me at an initial meeting, "What can be done with an economics or business degree?"
Most authors in the "Business Economist at Work" series provide background information on the company, describe job opportunities, and illustrate the nature of their job responsibilities through various examples. This article is more general in that it discusses some of the ways in which all business economists can contribute to the business of higher education. Most visible of these contributions is through classroom participation.
WHY EXECUTIVES TEACH
Executives do not teach for financial reasons. A few years ago, local colleges and universities in the Buffalo, New York, area were surveyed to determine their teaching stipends for part-time faculty. Stipends ranged from $1,000 to $2,500 per course, with a mean of nearly $1,700.(1)
In my ten years of administrative experience, the size of the teaching stipend has been an issue in only three instances. In one case, an individual declined a part-time teaching offer because he could teach the same course at another institution for $500 more. A second individual requested that his teaching stipend be raised $200 to match the stipend paid him by a competitor institution -- a request that was readily accommodated. The third individual stopped teaching for us when he requested a doubling of his stipend in light of the significant marginal contribution his course made to overall University profit.:

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