[bigodanktime]

Professors are rewarded for publications and almost nothing else (at least from what I've seen at the school I'm apart of), so because of it all effort goes towards publications, and this passes down to students and the folks they hope to hire. Its also unfortunate any work that is not done towards a publication is essentially invisible to everyone within that system. Even things like teaching are considered second class to publications (very unfortunate consequence).

That being said this is from my experience and am unsure how it is at other schools.

[kurthr]

Well, early in their carriers they are rewarded for grants and supporting many grad students. It's problematic to not award tenure to a professor who is supporting 30 students. If they leave with their grants and only take a few (of the best) students, leaving the rest of the students in the lurch and very (rightfully?!) angry at the department dean/provost. Usually, some other means of supporting them is found since it's a little embarrassing otherwise.

After tenure, it seems like profs drop down to a manageable 4-7 students in the disciplines I studied in. You can do that on 1-2 grants a year.

As others have previously mentioned it's a bit weird, because actually teaching is neither taught nor really supported by most research universities. It's often required, but not all that advantageous to do well.

[bigodanktime]

Its unfortunate with teaching as I see it as an opportunity to extend the good values of research and problem solving to students (at least in the later years of a degree).

I guess it depends on how you view an academic institution, is it to produce good thinkers or produce good work, although similar seems like you approach it in different ways when approaching it from one way or the other.

I'm not even upset with professors, I think Assistant Profs do the most work I've ever seen anyone ever do, its absolutely insane the crazy workload they take on to get tenure.

[robwwilliams]

I think this demand for focus is more pervasive at top tier institutions. I intentionally chose a second tier research institution with great colleagues in my area, then neuroscience, so that I could indulge my whims and T-type style of science. I “wasted” two years playing with databases for genetics and then published the first paper in biomedical science with a URL in 1994 (Portable Dictionary of the Mouse Genome). That service is still running as wwww.genenetwork.org and has been a terrific catalyst for much high impact work.

The advantage now of T type approaches is that, as the source points out so clearly, it gives you flexibility to grow, shift fields, and collaborate efficiently.

[throwawaygh]

But that's a good example of a high-risk/high-reward investment in research infrastructure.

The article mentions, for example, maintaining the group's build system and making project logos. Different in kind, no?

PhD students should not be recruited with the expectation that they will do devops, software engineering, and graphic design work. Or, if that's the labor they're doing, universities should maybe start paying them a fair wage for their labor.

Building something like genenetwork.org in 1994 was exciting R&D for the time. Setting up a CI/CD pipeline or making a project logo in 2022 isn't.

[Topolomancer]

> PhD students should not be recruited with the expectation that they will do devops, software engineering, and graphic design work. Or, if that's the labor they're doing, universities should maybe start paying them a fair wage for their labor.

Fully agree with you there---and for me, that was never the point of the article.

> Building something like genenetwork.org in 1994 was exciting R&D for the time. Setting up a CI/CD pipeline or making a project logo in 2022 isn't.

Yes, at the same time, maybe setting up CI/CD is needed nonetheless in order to better manage a shared codebase. My point is that PIs should be aware of these things and also recognise this sort of 'foundational' work whenever it happens. Of course, if a lab needs complex DevOps, then of course they should hire someone _dedicated_ for the role.

My observations pertain to the kind of work that happens behind the scenes and is often unrewarded and unrecognised. As I said: academia is doing a disservice to the people that are willing to (to re-use the example you supplied) set up a CI pipeline for their project or teach others how to write code cleanly, etc. Of course, the best approach would be to have dedicated roles for dedicated tasks in research (and beyond).

[bachmeier]

> Professors are rewarded for publications and almost nothing else

This is true for professors at research universities in grant fields. Their job is to bring in grants. Teaching is of minor importance in those fields, to the point that they don't need you to teach at all if you're that bad at it. Other fields don't have much in the way of grants, so teaching is given considerably more weight at all but the wealthiest institutions.

[periheli0n]

This depends heavily on the university employing the professor. At least in the UK there are universities where one can progress to the highest academic rank by excellence in teaching. Given that such universities draw the majority of their income from students, this makes economical sense.

Whether the economisation of higher education is a good thing is a different question, of course. But in the UK there seems to be a strong drive towards separating teching and research. And to be honest, it becomes increasingly difficult to be good at teaching and research at the same time. If done properly, either is a full time job.

[g_p]

The UK's "multiple tracks" leading to professor are indeed attractive, however at some institutions it's not really a "true" professorship - some might be fixed-term contracts, and (at least in another track) it isn't recognised by outsider funders as a full professorship, or indeed as a true academic post.

Teaching is generally under-valued across the board - graduate students are expected to teach as part of their PhD work very often, sometimes paid extra for this. I've seen some unscrupulous departments making no sincere attempts to help students finish their PhD on time, then turn around and offer up scraps like hourly teaching "contracts" to teach their classes, after their PhD funding has run out.

Separating teaching and research, if it leads to both being equal peers, can make sense. I fear, however, that teaching will continue to be the un-favoured step-sibling in institutions which have research income. Research income and grants let you build a fiefdom of underlings, but teaching generally doesn't - one professor can teach a class of 200, and run a couple of tutorial sessions with a team of 8 post-grad students.

The scaling of teaching is very attractive to the university, but it doesn't get the professor people under them, to make them more important.

I've seen people be hired into "active teaching" academic roles who are manifestly incapable of teaching. Their "research track record" seemingly made up for their car-crash presentation to the department during the interview process. After the pile of (entirely foreseeable, by anyone at the presentation) student complaints flooded in, they ended up not needing to teach. There's definitely an implicit assumption that "teaching is easy, and anyone can do it" lingering around in a lot of departments.

I don't think we should entirely split research and teaching - it's very much possible to be T-shaped and good at both. Indeed, being able to engage a room full of tired students first thing on a Monday morning is a skill many academic presenters would benefit from having, purely in learning how to better communicate their research. Unless departments take a much wider, more holistic view of what is expected though, this won't be valued or change, as far as I can see at least.