[sir_kin]

The purpose of universities is twofold: to educate and to produce new knowledge. You seem to have the mindset that most of a professor's work should be teaching-related.

People don't do PhDs because they want to teach, they do it because they love their field. And a professor's status (and funding!) depends on a history of producing high quality (and quantity) research, not their teaching prowess.

[wbillingsley]

> People don't do PhDs because they want to teach, they do it because they love their field. And a professor's status (and funding!) depends on a history of producing high quality (and quantity) research, not their teaching prowess.

Actually that's not quite true. Most continuing academics in Australia are "40/40/20" teaching/research/service. So at least on-paper, the teaching is on an equal footing with the research. In practice, universities tend to specialise. Research groups in the university's focus areas will in addition have a large number of post-docs, research fellows, and other non-teaching staff, balancing that research area far more towards research. And the academics leading those grants will point to the grant money they are bringing in and get a lot of "teaching relief" so they can focus on it. And yes, they'll tend to get promoted faster. However, this also means that some of the other academics in that area (and in all the other fields that go to supporting it) end up having to focus more strongly on the teaching, to make this work. While you can locally optimise yourself if you're keener on research than teaching, most schools receive more of their money from teaching than from research, and it is also the teaching that produces the future PhD and post-docs to fuel the research, so overall they still have to retain a delicate balance between research and teaching.

[sevensor]

Mind your generalizations there. I stated a PhD program because I wanted to do something about the poor preparation of my colleagues. I wanted to teach. But I learned to my chagrin that that's not what gets you hired, nor is it what gets you tenure. So I left academia once I got my degree. I don't think it's even true of all those who remain that they're there because they love research. Some of them are like me, but with more perseverence. Swimming against the tide, trying to teach.

[stale2002]

That's great that PHDs are good at research, and engage in that.

But personally, I want to be taught by a professional teacher who specializes in teaching and isn't spending any of their valuable time doing research.

Researchers should research and teachers should teach.

It makes no sense to me that researchers, who do not enjoy teaching and would rather be researching, are forced to teach.