Higher education is plagued by concerns about the return on investment of a four-year degree, low rates of degree completion, and the mental and emotional health of students. A factor in all these concerns is the frustrating reality that, at far too many of the nation's 2,000 four-year colleges, the work of teaching and mentoring is only a secondary concern. This has had unfortunate consequences for costs, instruction, and campus culture. It also presents an opportunity for governing boards and public officials to step up. It is no coincidence that the nation's most expensive colleges are those at which faculty teach just two to four courses per year (amounting to three or six hours a week of classroom time each semester). At these institutions, faculty devote the lion's share of their time to research, bureaucratic duties, and chasing grants. The result is that more and more teaching is being shouldered by part-timers, adjunct faculty, and teaching assistants, who have limited opportunity or incentive to invest themselves in students' academic lives. If colleges adopted the not-so-radical norm that faculty should devote half their working hours to instructional responsibilities, it would have massive benefits for colleges: reducing costs, alleviating the need for adjunct faculty, and increasing faculty-student interaction. The authors suggest that higher-education research organizations seem disinclined to release data on faculty work time to the public, making it difficult to talk more about faculty workload. The authors believe trustees should insist that teaching be the foundational responsibility of a professor's job, with expectations and incentives overhauled to reflect that understanding.