University Research
April 23rd, 2004 at 9:29 am by David FarrarI am surprised that there has not been more publicity on the fact that around 40% of academics are inactive in terms of research.
When I was on the University of Otago Council, I made myself mildly unpopular with some staff by actually scrutinsing sabbatical leave reports and the level of research done.
The requirement do perform research is the major factor why many academic staff have less than 20% contact hours in a term week, and have around five months a year of non term time. The study I did at Otago found (like the TEC) that many academics had not produced any research for years or even decades.
It is great we do have some top class academics. But I think universities still have some way to go in terms of policies on tenure, research and lecturing ability to pay more and retain the best ones but weed out the bad ones.
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April 23rd, 2004 at 10:28 am
David, is there any reason/s why it has taken SOOOOOO long for this be taken on board?
Its a genuine question by the way!
What suprises me is that it is a Labour coalition doing this.
Same pressure in the secondary sector with performance appraisals on professional staff etc.
Vote:April 23rd, 2004 at 12:30 pm
From my uni experience, many of the more research based acedemics couldn’t teach at all. My only concern with this is if universities start concentrating too much on staff good at research, increasing the number of those with pitiful teaching skills. This would only be to the detriment of the students.
Equally, there is no point giving acedemics a large amount of non-teaching time and not having any output as a result. Maybe universties could allow their acedemic staff to choose two options – teaching (with 75% student contact) and research (with only 20% student contact)to ensure that students don’t miss out.
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