Differential Teaching/Research Load

[mythbuster]

My uni has new leadership, and the rumor going around is that they want to institute differential teaching and research loads for the TT folks. Those who are "good at research" teach less, those who are "good a teaching" teach more.  I can think of LOTS of questions about how this would/ would not work. But here's my starter question:

Do you know of anyplace where this does work? By work I mean that the teaching TT and the research TT folks are equally valued, and have roughly equal opportunities for advancement. If so, please describe how it works.

As you might guess by the question, I'm skeptical, so convince me that this can be a good thing.

[nescafe]

I know they do this at U-Mass Lowell, and likely at other U-Mass campuses. No information on how well-liked the system is, though.

[aside]

Do you know of anyplace where this does work? By work I mean that the teaching TT and the research TT folks are equally valued, and have roughly equal opportunities for advancement. If so, please describe how it works.

As you might guess by the question, I'm skeptical, so convince me that this can be a good thing.

I am skeptical as well, because similar efforts at places I have been have not worked well.  Even if the "research" and "teaching" folks "are equally valued," which they might be in a philosophical sense, they are not likely to be equally rewarded.  Even with the best of intentions to be even-handed, good research is just so much easier to measure and more important to the metrics by which research universities are ranked than is teaching.  If others know of places where this works well, I would love to hear about them.

[polly_mer]

If others know of places where this works well, I would love to hear about them.

I was at a regional comprehensive that allowed people to individually set weights for teaching, research, and service. 

However, the limits were something like:

50-80% teaching
15-30% research including discipline-based education research
5-20% service

People could buy out of one course per term for research or make arrangements for a lower course load for a high-priority service assignment like working on the accreditation self-study, but there was no way to change the nominal 4/4 to a 2/2 or lower true research-focused load.

Most people I knew tended to take a high teaching weight and then make a trade-off between research and service based on personal preference.

I have observed from afar institutions that create research tracks (usually TT with loads of 2/1 or less) and teaching tracks (usually non-TT in charge of one course taught to hundreds of students while herding all the TAs).  However, those are definitely not equally rewarded with equal advancement opportunities.

:edited: the math has to work to be 100% for the extremes

[Aster]

Yes. For this to work *properly*, a system like Polly's is the norm.

Where there aren't rigid fixed weights, but flexible ranges within the expected workload categories.

The ranges allowed necessary flexibility between different academic units (with different load expectations). The ranges allowed necessary flexibility for different circumstances, and changing circumstances.

[Hibush]

Having different research/teaching proportions works fine. The split depends on the departmental need in the topic area of the faculty member, as well as the interest and talent of the professor. The range of 30 to 70% FTE seems to work. Going 100% is bad. Having high-teaching be non-TT is bad.

This system recognizes that people who get a ton of grants will teach less (or, people who teach less had better get a ton of grants). There is no "course release" for being a productive researcher. That concept becomes unnecessary.

[Morden]

We have both teaching-service and teaching-service-scholarship tenurable positions; both have the same titles, both lead to full professor, and people can switch between patterns in consultation with the Dean. We also don't have merit pay. So it works pretty well for us, but in the absence of these conditions, I think it would lead to inequity over time.

[wwwdotcom]

We have similar tenure-line positions and structure as mentioned by Morden (large urban public R1).  However, we do have merit pay which is based on differing annual evaluation metrics. It requires a reasonable chair and T&P committee members which we thankfully have. Can certainly see how it would be a problem if the wrong people were making merit decisions. I can't speak for other departments at our university, but it works quite well in our department.