Create a career path for university teachers who specialize in teaching, and promote them for teaching results, not papers
In short
- Universities create a full-time career path for faculty whose main job is teaching.
- Promotion on this path depends on how well people teach, not on how many papers they publish.
- Pay and status on this path are the same as for faculty whose main job is research.
- Universities stop leaving their courses almost entirely to cheap, short-term lecturers.
If this comes true
At a university where many students used to stumble in intro physics, a professor who specializes in teaching has spent ten years polishing problem sessions, and now students who came from the humanities are choosing physics as their major in their second year.
Perhaps
Faculty who choose the teaching path might be brushed off in meetings as people who don't do research, and the most talented people might avoid the path because of it.
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The proposal in detail
This applies to universities that receive public money and to higher education institutions that grant degrees. These institutions are asked to set up a path for full-time faculty whose main job is teaching students, separate from the path for faculty whose main job is research. Faculty on this path are hired with no fixed end date to their employment, and they have the same job ranks, the same pay scale, and the same right to speak in university meetings as research faculty. Hiring and promotion are decided not by the number of papers or the amount of research funding, but by teaching results: course design, how much students' understanding grows, the development of teaching materials, contributions to improving colleagues' courses, and research and presentations about how to teach. These decisions do not rely only on student course surveys. They combine observation of classes by colleagues, records of what students have learned, and reviews by educators from outside the university. Universities make sure that at least a set share of introductory and basic courses is taught by full-time faculty, and they do not allow most courses to be left to short-term lecturers. Research faculty still keep their responsibility to teach, and faculty on either path can switch to the other partway through their careers through a set procedure. When public research funds and university subsidies are distributed, the number and treatment of faculty on the teaching path are also counted in the evaluation.
BenefitsTalent for teaching is finally rewarded fairly inside the university
The core of this system is to turn teaching from a side job into work a person can build a career on. If there is a path where promotion and pay depend on teaching results, people with talent and passion for teaching can stay at the university without pretending to do research, and they can put everything into improving their courses. When full-time faculty teach the introductory courses, the pattern of students stumbling in their first year and losing the will to learn can be stopped. For students who are the first in their family to go to college, or who have moved over from another field, having a teacher who carefully explains the basics can make the difference between continuing and quitting. Faculty who specialize in teaching study how to help students understand better and share what they learn with colleagues, so the quality of teaching across the whole university goes up. Research faculty no longer have to carry everything alone, so they can focus more easily on research. As the use of unstable lecturers declines, the lives of the people who teach at universities become more secure, and the tuition students pay is really spent on education.
DrawbacksResearch and teaching are split apart, and two classes of faculty appear
The deepest cost is that research and teaching become the work of different people. One of the values of a university course has been learning how to think, in its raw form, from people who are producing new knowledge with their own hands. The more faculty there are who specialize in teaching, the fewer chances students have to see research up close, and university courses might move closer to an extension of high school, passing on knowledge that has already been tidied up. Also, even if the system promises the same status and pay, the culture of a university does not change right away. If, among people who value research results, faculty on the teaching path are looked down on as a notch lower, and their voice inside the university stays weak in practice, the best young people will avoid this path. The ways of measuring teaching results are also still unreliable. Student surveys are easily swayed by popularity, by how well someone speaks, and by bias about a teacher's gender, age, or looks, and teachers who are strict are sometimes rated lower. On top of that, hiring more full-time faculty costs a lot of money, and within a limited budget it means cutting the number of researchers or the amount of research funding.
Learn the background
Universities have two big roles: creating new knowledge and passing knowledge on to young people. Yet at many universities, hiring and promotion of faculty are decided almost entirely by research results. The number of papers, how often they are cited, and the research funding won are at the center of evaluation, and how well someone has developed students is treated as an extra, if it counts at all. University rankings and the distribution of research funds are also decided by research results, so the whole university pours its energy into research and teaching comes second. As a result, many courses, especially large introductory ones, are left to lecturers on unstable contracts with low pay. They teach while looking for their next job, with no time to polish their courses and no room to talk with students who need help. People with passion and talent for teaching cannot be promoted that way, so they have no choice but to spend their time on research or leave the university. Students pay high tuition, but in their first year they fall behind in class, and not a few give up on learning. People have long said that teaching matters, but as long as the systems of evaluation and pay reward only research, people's time and passion will keep flowing toward research.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
It helps pay for the server and the AI's planting
This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-23b) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes