Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Buying out of teaching - opinions?
This is a topic that comes up at many research universities, and I'd be curious for your opinions. Some institutions formally allow researchers to "buy" out of teaching responsibilities. Some places actively encourage this practice, as a way to try to boost research output and standing. Does this work overall? Faculty who spend all their time on research should generally be more research-productive, though it would be interesting to see quantitatively how much so. Of course, undergraduate and graduate classroom education is also an essential part of university life, and often (though certainly not always) productive researchers are among the better teachers. It's a fair question to ask whether teaching buyout is a net good for the university as a whole. What do you think?
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8 comments:
I know a lot of excellent researchers who also bring a lot of cleverness to their teaching. Buying out their load would increase their short-term productivity, but I think that their long-term creativity would suffer if they never taught. And, frankly, if you want to clarify your thinking about your subject, there's nothing like teaching an advanced course in your specialty or an adjacent specialty. It's even better than writing a review article.
OTOH, I'm not in a research university, and buying out a chunk of my 12 unit/quarter load would DEFINITELY boost my research productivity. Strangely enough, it would also improve my teaching, since the portion of my brain devoted to teaching would only have 1 class to focus on instead of 3-4.
Massimo, you and I are on the same wavelength, generally speaking.... Moreover, as Alex points out, I think teaching stimulates my research to a degree. Of course, a super heavy teaching load slows down research progress, but there should be some middle ground. If we claim to value undergrad education, and we have the nerve to charge high tuition, then we have a responsibility to put our best teachers in the classroom. Given that research universities devalue teaching significantly, it's a foregone conclusion that the set of good teachers will significantly overlap with research active faculty.
I think it happens rarely enough to have a tiny effect on anything.
I don't see what the issue is if we're talking about buying out a single term every few years or so. Massimo suggests that research funds should always be used to hire personnel or buy equipment. But in some cases, wouldn't being able to spend more time with your group be more advantageous (both to your group and the research itself)? I would also argue that the training of graduate students is part of our educational mission as professors, hence buying out of teaching isn't necessarily a completely selfish act.
More generally, my experience is that research productivity and effort can vary considerably from faculty member to faculty member. Perhaps it isn't so crazy to imagine a system where faculty who are less engaged in research be asked to teach slightly more, thus allowing the occasional buyout by others in the department.
Just to clarify, Anon@11:33, I meant repeated buy-outs. I certainly know faculty here and elsewhere that raise enough research funding that they could credibly argue that they should be able to buy out of teaching quasi-continuously, if that were allowed. We all know people who virtually do this at some places (e.g., only teach a grad seminar course on exactly their research). Sure, the occasional semester off from teaching is not a bad thing. I'm more concerned with a system where research progress leads to teaching buy-outs, and feedback mechanisms tend to reinforce that (more productive researchers that have made buy-outs can continue to be more productive), while at the same time promotion and other advancement decisions hinge on research productivity.
I'm in favor of it. The teaching faculty does a better job and is more professional, so if a professor doesn't want to teach, he shouldn't have to.
One of the effects of having research profs teach 1st year grad courses is that the incoming students end up concluding that they're a combination of incompetent and uncaring. This is likely to get reversed when they teach in their discipline, but some students swear they'll never take another class from such professors.
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