Han van der Maas | Let’s be honest: for a career in science, research is more important
The biggest pain point is the pyramid of positions: the higher one climbs in the academic hierarchy, the fewer jobs are available, writes columnist Han van der Maas. “Research is and remains more important than teaching for a university career, even though we all keep claiming that it isn’t.”
The real pain points of the Recognize and Reward program are rarely mentioned. One of them is that research is and remains more important than teaching for a university career, even though we all keep claiming otherwise. We need to be honest about this with young PhD candidates and postdocs. In later applications, especially for higher positions, publications, impact, and secured grants play a major role. Teaching experience is also relevant, but more as a general requirement than as a distinguishing selection criterion.
Low-propability
This is probably because candidates don’t differ much in their teaching profiles. Candidates for a professorship have almost all taught multiple courses, received good evaluations, and contributed to educational innovations. The variation in research track records, however, is much greater. The difference between an H-index of 20 and 80 is on a completely different scale, and success in securing grants also varies widely, from a few hundred thousand to several million.
PhD candidates or postdocs will likely notice this on the job as well. Academics work on weekends and during vacations on low-probability grant applications in order to do more research, and therefore less teaching. Conversely, no one submits applications in order to be allowed to do more teaching.
The biggest pain point is the pyramid of positions: the higher one climbs in the academic hierarchy, the fewer jobs are available. How this plays out depends largely on the ‘principle’ a faculty follows. Under the staffing principle, the available budget is central, meaning promotion is only possible when there is room within the staff structure. The career principle, on the other hand, is based on the employee’s achievements and allows promotion based on meeting certain criteria, regardless of existing vacancies. The first often leads to frustration when people consistently perform above their appointment level, while the second can quickly become unaffordable: a professor costs roughly one and a half to two times as much as an assistant professor.
Not unsolvable
Yet the career principle is fairer, and affordability is not an unsolvable problem. There is something peculiar about the current situation. A professor is expected to publish more, secure more grants, and provide more leadership than colleagues in lower ranks, but not to teach more. In practice, universities use teaching-hour systems in which the number of teaching hours is independent of rank or salary. This is remarkable, because experienced staff can usually teach more efficiently: lectures take less time to prepare, theses are graded faster, and exams are created more quickly.
From this perspective, it would make sense for a professor to take on one and a half to two times as many teaching hours. This would keep teaching affordable and naturally reduce some of the attractiveness of a professorship. I have already tested this idea with a few fellow professors; they thought it was a very bad proposal.
