Education and Research
A twitter discussion this morning with Ian Hopkinson (@smallcasserole) Rory Duncan (@HardyDuncan) and Mary Wombat (@little_mavis), led me to try to formulate what I think about the relationship between education and research. There is a very good case that these should not be required to be together. Any academic knows cases of researchers who did well and did teach even though they really should not have been unleashed on the students. Equally talented teachers, perhaps because they spend more than the minimum time working on their teaching, can often struggle with jobs or promotion. The government have also talked about some of this as a cost cutting measure. But…
[Edit 25/1/11: Another, interesting opinion from David Colquhoun (@david_colquhoun) on the need to separate the two, though I feel that this runs into the eliteism issues raised by Stephen Curry (@Stephen_Curry)]
Education subsidises Research
Universities in general receive more money to educate than do research. Yet in many departments the staff do more research than education. Of course things are muddied by the fact that the research will take over all remaining time! Education does not pay for time spent on research over the weekend. The research money given out, therefore, goes further as it does not have to pay the full cost of the researchers. Even if the teaching is bought out this will normally pay for someone to come in, or a teaching fellow position to cover the teacher at much less than the researchers salary.
[Edit 15/10/10: Apparently at Ediburgh income from research is now >40% I would be interested in other statistics that people have on this. Both the percentage of income and the percentage of staff time on research]
[Edit 25/1/11: A more informed version of this argument, and how higher fees might just go to research can from John Holmwood]
On the other hand…
Research subsidises Education
A big attraction for me of the academic career was the freedom and time available. I am lucky that I am a mathematician and so not having a research grant does not make research impossible. Most people completing a PhD have a wide variety of jobs available. Many of which pay a lot more than academic ones. The thrill of research, the freedom and the ability to be part of a vibrant international community all make up for the lack of cash. Take this away and it would be harder to attract the best into academic teaching. Is having a PhD too much? Firstly I think that the comment (of other jobs) would apply to anyone who you would want teaching at this high level. Secondly, although it is not necessary to be research active in order to teach a particular subject, being research capable (~having a PhD) could be. You need teachers who have seen beyond the limits of the material they are putting forward if they are to truly inspire with the ideas.
In conclusion, even if they are not logically combined, the historical situation that has linked teaching and research should be unpicked carefully!
I think one of the problems with the current system is that the number of lecturers appointed is to a large degree driven by the amount of teaching to be done and the convention in at least the Russell Group universities is that all lecturers are researchers. Therefore the number of lecturers appointed is not matched to the amount of research funding available.
The teaching load given to university lecturers is relatively low. I taught a couple of supervisions per week, a problem class and for 1.5 term I did 2 hours per week lectures (~6hrs per week over the teaching year). Furthermore term time totals only 30 weeks per year.
My wife, as an HE/FE lecturer at an land-based college (I wasn’t allowed to say “agricultural”!) typically has 20 hours and above contact time per week with 36 teaching weeks in a year.
When I was teaching I certainly drew on my research experience to inform my teaching, but I taught quite a wide range of material so quite often I would teach things in which I had no research experience. I wouldn’t mind going back to teaching, and acting as someones research gimp in the summer holidays – damned if I’m going to write another grant application!
I agree that there is a lot of confusion in the current system, and there is also a question of prestige. Teaching (even excellent teaching) is not considered as important as research of any quality. To be honest if I was not able to research I would prefer to be a school teacher where I could teach without the “blessed class” of researchers around.
This issue is very complicated. The benefits are not just financial: I’ve got ideas for my teaching from my research and vice versa.
That is very true. Though I think that sort of symbiosis only works for people invested in the teaching.
One reason for having every member of a faculty active in research is that it allows a justification for salaries higher than FE teachers. However, the main reason in the UK for having them research active is income. When someone is entered in the RAE the university gets money for them (provided the research level is high enough). And grants from UK research councils come with very large helpings of overheads, i.e., money to cover the full/hidden costs of research.
My own view is that there is no link between research and teaching. There are good researchers, good teachers and a non-empty intersection but there is no simple inclusion of one set in the other.
Thanks for your comment Kevin. I very much enjoyed “How to think like a mathematician”. I agree that teaching and research ability are relatively independant skills. The question is how to move from the current mono-culture where one set of skills is domniant. To do that we need to understand the ways in which the two are entangled and this piece was an attempt to do that.
Thanks for the How to Think Like a Mathematician comment.
Regarding entanglement of teaching and research, I think it is the money situation that I described above that entangles them. As for disentangling, well, money is involved too. If the govt in the UK were to put a premium on teaching, eg by giving extra money to departments with good student satisfaction scores, then we would see people employed just for teaching.