Teaching and research can co-exist

An interesting study that’s going to fuel the claims that faculty don’t do enough work — 20% of UT-Austin’s faculty teach 57% of student credit hours.  That’s understandable.  Graduate classes are small, and first-year undergrad classes are huge.  It’s pretty easy for a small number of faculty to rack up most of the credit hours.

It’s the later stats that I found more surprising — those teaching the most still brought in their fair share of research funding.

But the study suggests that research and teaching can easily coexist. It found that the 20 percent of faculty with the heaviest teaching loads generated 18 percent of UT’s research funding, meaning that they remained competitive in research even as they carried more than their share of teaching duties.

“This suggests that these faculty are not jeopardizing their status as researchers by assuming such a high level of teaching responsibility,” the study states.

The least productive 20 percent of faculty teach just 2 percent of all student credit hours at UT — meaning that students barely see them.

Research grants at UT go overwhelmingly to a small group of faculty. Two percent of faculty are responsible for 57 percent of research, and 20 percent are responsible for 99.8 percent.

via Study: One-fifth of faculty does most of the work – College, Inc. – The Washington Post.