In today’s Pope Center feature, Troy Camplin argues that the modern tradition of requiring tenure-track professors to engage in both teaching and research is misguided and ignores potential benefits from specialization:
There is little evidence that good teachers are good researchers, or vice versa. Nor should we expect there to be any necessary connection between the two. And yet, we hear such claims all the time.
The fact of the matter is that each – being a good researcher and being a good teacher – requires a completely different skill set. And each has different goals. This is something we understand for high school teachers – we don’t require them to do research – but not for undergraduate professors.
Camplin says that the current system has resulted in the hiring of “less-than-great teachers” and an “overproduction of research.”
Read the full article here.
