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by periheli0n
1629 days ago
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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. |
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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.